OT-ish?: CDC says Chicken is most likely to make you sick

Submitted by El Fuego on

In more light-hearted news, turns out chicken is not infallible:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicken-is-americas-most-sickening-food-cdc-data-show/

The CDC investigated the causes of "outbreaks" in which two or more people get the same illness after eating a common food. Realizing that contaminated food is the cause of 9.4 million illnesses each year — and has been blamed for 5,760 separate outbreaks that resulted in 100,939 illnesses, 5,699 hospitalizations and 145 deaths from 2009 to 2015, the last year for which government statistics are available — the CDC decided to take a closer look.

No other food, it turns out, is quite as problematic as chicken  —  the heart-healthy alternative to red meat

Either someone in the CDC is a Michigan Alum, or Harbaugh is a profit. I'm inclined to think the latter...

 

PB-J Time

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:16 AM ^

Thank you for bringing our attention back where it belongs, our football coaches nutritional standards. We need more of these and not to focus on the minor issue down in Columbus

/s (just in case its not obvious)

xtramelanin

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:18 AM ^

thats because cleaning chickens is brutal work and the huge places like Tyson Foods are the ones who put out all the chickens.

our chickens are clean.  calm.  they know their plays and the listen to audibles.  disciplined.  blue collar.  real hen-house rats.  you get the picture. 

Wendyk5

August 2nd, 2018 at 11:34 AM ^

Right on, xtramelanin. Large commercial slaughterhouses are gross places. Since I live in a big city, I tend to buy all my meat at Whole Foods. It's super expensive, but at least I feel somewhat comforted by their numbering system (1-5, for animal treatment, 1 being decent, 5 being the animal is staying in a suite at the Ritz). 

xtramelanin

August 2nd, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^

i guarantee we are a 5.  years ago when i built the hen house, complete with double-pane argon gas double-hung windows and a solid core oak door, my mgowife's comment was, "so when is the cable guy coming?"   free range, plenty of food/water/shade/shelter, etc.  

xtramelanin

August 2nd, 2018 at 12:37 PM ^

we raise 2 different types of birds.  we have 'layers' which obviously are our laying chickens.  we generally have 100-150 of those at a time.   we also raise 'meat birds', and traditionally raise 2-300 of those/yr.  the meat birds are for eating, get large fast, and are dumb.  our layers can be eaten but by the time we're done with them they are more for soup, not for roasting.  nothing wrong with them, its just that the meat will be tougher and they are much smaller than the meat birds.  our meat birds tend to have a processed weight of somewhere from 5 to 8 lbs.  layers would be 2, maybe 3 at most. 

outsidethebox

August 3rd, 2018 at 9:01 AM ^

I'm with you...we only raise for ourselves now...smaller scale...same philosophy. When we lived near Indy we did a similar quantity...sold to our friends and work colleagues.

Those Cornish cross meat birds grow unbelievably fast. Do you use the "Red Star" hens for layers? Who do you sell to?

drjaws

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:20 AM ^

Thank god OP didn't somehow link this to the Urban Liar situation ..... I mean, can't we all comment in 1-2 threads?  Do we really need to have 269 individual threads?  The correct answer is no.  No we dont.

M Go Dead

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:22 AM ^

I refuse to read the article,  because this is the internet and I can comment on things with no prior knowledge,  but I bet that is based on number of cases alone. With chicken being so popular, it would be interesting to know percentages compared to other less populssf food products.

EGD

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:37 AM ^

My first job out of law school was at a small personal injury firm, and we had this case where a lady had gotten a pretty bad case of food poisoning from a Taco Bell chicken burrito.  So I call her up to get some details about the case, and she informs me that she only ate half the burrito and kept the other half in her freezer for "analysis."  (This is months afterward, mind you.).  I'm like, "yeah, we're probably not really going to be able to have the burrito analyzed.."  But she wasn't satisfied with that, so a week later she shows up the my office with the thawed burrito in hand and insists I take it to some kind of lab.  

I think that might have been the first client I ever fired.

Don

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:42 AM ^

The most violently I've ever vomited was after eating some very undercooked chicken cooked by somebody else. Thought I was going to turn myself inside out.

Mr. Elbel

August 2nd, 2018 at 10:42 AM ^

True story: only time I've gotten food poisoning was the one time I ordered a steak burrito from Moe's instead of a chicken burrito. Still, I'll that chance. Chicken is the best.

Rabbit21

August 2nd, 2018 at 11:14 AM ^

Umm, yeah because you have to cook it all the way through and if you don't do it right you can dry it out, I cook chicken all the time and still have to check every once in a while for "rawness".  Not a surprise about this at all.

Don

August 2nd, 2018 at 12:09 PM ^

Because of my past experience I'm a fanatic about cooking chicken thoroughly.

In the warm months I'll grill it outside, and right when it gets to the point of char I'll wrap it all up in foil and put it back on the grill for another spell. Sometimes I'll take it out of the foil and place it back directly on the grill to crisp up the skin a bit for a minute, but like you I frequently check the thick pieces inside to make sure there's no pink.