system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does my cooking spoon sterilize itself as I use it to cook? Is it safe to serve the food with said spoon?

I have large wooden spoons that I sometimes use to cook.  Let's say I throw in some uncooked ground meat into the pot and stir it around with a spoon, and then set it down on the spoon rest.  Then as I cook I add in other in other ingredients, stirring with the same spoon each time, but then placing back on the rest. 

At the end of the cooking, is that spoon safe to use to serve food with / use to taste a sample of the dish?  Is the spoon rest "re-infecting" my spoon with raw foods?

I think about this every time I cook (pretty much daily), but then again, I've never been sick after eating. Thanks guys.
gpt
When you are stirring the food the surface temperature of the spoon rises high enough to kill the germs. You would not have a problem.

Most germs of the kitchen, especially the kinds that gets you sick, can be killed by heating them. Quick spikes of heat of the levels found in the kitchen may not work but long exposure to heat will. 

Regardless, you will never kill all the germs in your food. You are trying to kill enough that eating the germs in the food does not stress your body when you eat it. Think of those commercials where they say something cleans 99%, cooking just kills a large percentage so it is safe to eat.

One bit of warning, lots of germs can make toxins that will not be destroyed even after cooking. So even if you cook old rotted food enough to kill the germs you still have the toxins to worry about.

Source: ServSafe certification from the National Restaurant Association.