How do we safely prepare chicken?

With a new study pointing to fresh chicken meat being the dominant source of an increase in hospitalisation rates for campylobacter infection, it’s a timely reminder for people on prepping chicken safely.

Although the study’s numbers have been disputed by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), Massey University professor of food safety and microbiology Steve Flint says it’s been well publicised that raw chicken is a high-risk product for campylobacter – despite processors doing the best they can to reduce that risk.

“It’s not so much the fact that the chicken may be of a different age, it's just any fresh chicken is a risk and people need to be aware of that.”

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One of the problems is there’s no real way of telling if chicken is infected with campylobacter (unless you’re checking it in a lab under a microscope), because it’s unlike other organisms that might generate a bad smell, flavour or cause damage to the flesh, Flint says.

“The numbers that you need to cause [campylobacter] infection can be relatively low. You're not going to detect them by just looking at the chicken or feeling the chicken or smelling the chicken really.”

But there are ways to minimise that risk.

If raw chicken is not tightly sealed, juices may leak out and create a risk, Flint says.

“Anything that comes in contact with their [raw] chicken is going to potentially become contaminated with an organism that can cause food poisoning,” he says.

“Most particularly with their hands, if they get that juice on their hands, they need to make sure they wash their hands and don't start licking their fingers or eating straight after they've picked up the chicken.”

Raw chicken should always be kept chilled, Flint says. He suggests having a chilly bin the car so you can always throw it in there after your grocery trip.

“The campylobacter organism that causes the food poisoning is remarkably sensitive to freezing. So if you can get the chicken in a freezer as soon as you get home, that's certainly going to reduce the risk of you spreading contamination around your kitchen and into your food and so on.”

However, Flint notes this reduction in risk due to freezing doesn’t apply to many other food safety organisms that there are concerns about.

After the raw chicken (or its juices) touches your bench or chopping board, you want to make sure you are cleaning up well, “ideally with some disinfectant”, Flint says.

Hot water alone may not do the trick.

“To actually make sure that you are inactivating the organism with heat, you need temperatures around about 70 degrees Celsius, which is reasonably hot and probably hotter than what most people would have in their kitchen taps. So, relying on some sort of sanitiser is better because that will inactivate the organism relatively quickly.”

Food poisoning cases tend to rise in Aotearoa as the weather warms up (which encourages the growth of the organisms on the food) and people are in a hurry to cook food on barbecues, Flint says.

“It must be cooked thoroughly. It's not like beef where you can get away with having some sort of ‘rare’ condition.”

Consider investing in a food thermometer, he says. Ideally, the meat should rise to 70 degrees Celsius to be safe to consume.

Although the risk has reduced once the chook is thoroughly cooked, it can still get contaminated from the environment and the way you handle it, Flint says.

“Rather than campylobacter being the problem, you end up with things like Staphylococcus aureus, which is on people's hands and so on, which if you leave the chicken out on the bench overnight, there's potential there for these organisms to grow and cause you another food safety issue.”

While recommendations vary on timing, generally experts say it should be in the fridge within three hours of cooking.

Microorganisms will grow in the fridge too, and, if left long enough, spoilage organisms can cause a bad smell or taste, Flint says.

“Our recommendation is three days before you actually should be throwing it out, and ideally if you're going to leave it longer than three days, you should put it in the freezer, and it'll keep in the freezer as a cooked product for an indefinite period really.”

Te Whatu Ora says campylobacter infection usually begins with a headache, muscle pain, fever and fatigue, and may cause diarrhoea which is sometimes blood-stained, stomach pain and cramps which may be severe.

Flint says if you are suspicious of something you ate and begin to feel unwell, contact a health professional, particularly if you’re young, elderly or immunocompromised.