I understand why people are afraid of raw chicken but trusting your chef is as important as trusting your doctor. We eat raw chicken (seen in the photo) even though it is currently outlawed in Japan. These laws are meant to protect the general citizens of restaurants that are behave in a way that is negligent, or buy contaminated meats.

When you eat any food that is contaminated, even if it cooked you can be in for bacteria ride of a life time! To kill the bacteria it takes plenty of heat and most foods while they are not raw, they may not be cooked enough. If chicken would be contaminated, it would depend on what level of contamination and to what level the bacteria has multiplied and killed. Naturally any chicken that is sick, will likely make you sick.

If the chicken is cross contaminated you have a problem as well but the same goes for any food in your kitchen. Salmonella is found on as many vegetables and other food stuffs so be aware that chicken is not the only culprit. If you have any bacteria in or on your foods and you eat them raw, watch out!

Try not to get fixated on the idea that raw chicken is dangerous but having said that, in most countries except Japan, I wouldn’t venture out to have a raw burger. If you look at the link below you can see that Salmonella in 2013 was linked to cucumbers, beef, chicken, and tahini paste.

http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/outbreaks-2013.html

Salmonella bacteria can survive for weeks and they are not destroyed by freezing. Heat accelerates their demise when being heated to 55 °C for 90 minutes, or to 60 °C for 12 minutes. To protect against Salmonella infection, heating food for at least 10 minutes at 75 °C so the center of the food reaches this temperature. Then you are likely safe but not 100%!

Infected food are often introduced into the stream of consumers by;

-Poor kitchen hygiene.
-Excretions from either sick or infected but apparently clinically healthy people and animals.
-Polluted surface water and standing water.
-Un-Hygienically thawed fowl as the melted water contains bacteria.