Eli5 why do different meats need to be cooked to different temperatures?

Question

I thought the purpose of cooking meat was to kill bacteria and harmful things like E coli and salmonella, but don’t these things all die at the same temperature?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Also it’s not that you have to Cook something like chicken to 165, you can cook it to 150 or so and if it stays there for a few minutes you are good… 165 is usually recommended because the kill time is seconds instead of a minute or 2.