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

Different meats have different bacteria and harmful things in them, some have more and some have less. So you don’t need to cook some meats as hot as others because those meats don’t contain the particular pathogen that needs the higher heat.