The author has nostalgia for back when people were dying en masse from dysentery and cholera... We’ve had refrigeration for a hundred years now... use it.
Living in Asia we shopped in the local wet markets. They weren’t much different than your produce and meat sections of grocery stores. All the stalls were empty and washed down at the end of the day. Most of the restaurants shopped there. The range of things available from veg to live seafood was great. Seafood was on ice and meat was usually only held part of a day. We left with our coolers full. When we got home our servants would wash everything before it went into our clean kitchen.