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TLDR; If you're looking to reduce the risk of contamination, consider purchasing whole chickens or, at least, skin-on, bone-in, cuts. This is because the risk is substantially higher if you purchase skinless or deboned chicken - most contamination is on the surface of the chicken, and is easily killed during cooking. However, during processing, the tooling used to debone or deskin the chicken may get contaminated, and necessarily pierces the flesh of the meat. This tooling isn't usually disinfected between chickens (cost prohibitive). As a result, if one of the birds has surface contamination, this contamination will remain on the outside of the instrument, grow, and subsequently infect the inside of all the other birds. This is important, because direct heat is actually pretty good at killing bacteria. However, if the bacteria are able to penetrate to the inside of the chicken, there's a substantially greater likelihood that the temperature (and duration) on the inside of the chicken are insufficient to kill disease causing bacteria. Note: The overall idea is to recognize that surface bacterial contamination can be killed with sufficient temperature over a sufficient duration of time, recognizing that the lowest overall temperature will be in the thickest part of the meat, and ensuring that there isn't a mechanical mechanism that will introduce contamination in that area. |