Why can we eat duck meat medium rare, treating it like red meat, but chicken, which is white meat, has to be fully cooked, even though both are types of birds?

Question

Why can we eat duck meat medium rare, treating it like red meat, but chicken, which is white meat, has to be fully cooked, even though both are types of birds?

In: Other

Answer 1

It’s a bit of an oroborus.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about eating any kind of meat rare. Chicken Sashimi is a thing in some Japanese restaurants.

But chicken prepared for sashimi is treated very differently from your standard grocery store bird, because the producer knows there’s not going to be that extra kill step to prevent people from getting sick.

That grocery store bird can be safely sold with a lot of bacteria on the surface because it’s going to be thoroughly cooked, but one destined for sashimi (or just a medium rare duck) has to have more careful processing.