Do you eat your own chickens rare?

[honeydoll]

I have been doing some recent studies on health and nutrition, I may be going to college for a degree in this. I came across some info. I have been looking into more. I read if you raise your own meat, it is healthier for you to eat it rare. They say that how you feed and raise your animals, on a natural diet, is the imperative thing to making it safe to eat. As I study this, I was wondering if anyone other than the sources I studied has done this. It sounds so gross to me, because chickens rare, just yuck in my book. I was curious, have any of you tried this or do this? I know for really tasty wood duck, in the "old days" they would eat it rare. It is very good that way I hear.

Not that I'm going to try this. Just curious.

Carolyn

 

[bigredfeather]

I would not be one bit afraid to eat my pastured poultry somewhat rare. I am confident that they are salmonela and campylobacter free due to the way they are fed and housed. I think the big "yuck" factor people encounter when they think about eating poultry rare comes from the "chicken police" people saying it is so dangerous. The vast majority of Americans don't have the opportunity to dine on the quality of chicken that we BYCers raise, and because of this, are forced to cook their chicken to the point of being dry and tasteless. That being said, it is imperative they do this because of the risk of food borne illnesses. Here is a perfect example for this action:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...chicken-safety/overview/chicken-safety-ov.htm
I check this report every year, and it is always the same story. Per this report is the proof that free range and/or organic chciken is much safer, and it is highly because of how they are raised. Processing does play a part, but the living conditions dictate the presence or the lack of bacteria.

 

[Bossroo]

Harmful as well as beneficial viruses and bacteria occupy every nook and cranny of our environment. In my private as well as accademic and professional life with livestock, I have had the opportunity to be part of and/or visit quite a few University and private research labs, pathology labs, professional poultry production, and slaughter houses as well as tons of back yard operations. Let us just say that I have found the professional operations have written sanitary and safety protocals in place and follow them. They have teams of laboratory workers, private, University and Government scientists doing research and testing for pathogens,, foodstuffs, housing, animal and human health, and safety. This is so as their livelyhood is at stake, and hungry lawyers knocking at the door with pieces of papers waving in their hands. This is also enforced by strict health and safety laws and government Veterinarian inspections and laboratory tests for contamination. There may be a shady operator around and / or a disgruntled, ignorant, or careless emloyee and even an ecoterrorist that puts a black eye onto the industry. Pied pipers with their own views of the world and agendas and/ or an axe to grind abound. While in many backyard operations ignorence is bliss. Their saving grace being the wonderful immune systems that Mother Nature so thaughtfully provided to the animals that we eat as well as our own then add the heat of fire for cooking as a safety measure. Doubt about the bliss ? Read just about every other post.

 

[honeydoll]

Both interesting points. Bossroo, I understand what you are saying and yet I am a little confused with your point. Would you clarify a little. Maybe I just read it wrong, and am missing the obvious, but are you saying that anyone who eats rare meat is ignorant to the real possibilities of becoming ill? Sorry, you may have stated it obvious but i missed it somehow.

Thanks.

 

[Bossroo]

Pathogens are everywhere.

Drugs, disinfectans, laws, and institutions abound to combat them. Any animal meat can/ may become contaminated anytime by pathogens during life, processing, and/or incomplete cooking no matter where it came from.

So obviously, undercooked meat has a greater risk of causing illness.

One must then rely on one's own immune system if one becomes infected, then drugs. Just make sure that the internal temperature reaches at least 185* to be on the safer side.

I have put on Bar B Q's for at least 300 people quite a few times at our kids' school. One of my sidekick cooks was a Superior Court Judge. He always counceled us to always cook the meat to at least medium ( we cut into the center of the meat to make sure the juices ran clear) no matter how much people begged for a "rare" meat to avoid a possible illness and future liability lawsuit. So we always told these people that it was cooked to "rare". Enjoy !!!

 

[Stormy Autumn]

Bossroo, I don't think there are very many people who think that professional poultry operations purposely raise their chickens to be infected with Salmonella. (At least, those people don't make up a large percentage of chicken-eaters.) Like you said, factory farms do everything they can to keep things clean and disease-free because if all they produced were diseased chickens then they would go out of business. BUT the very nature of their business is to raise as many chickens as possible, while spending as little money as possible... and when you are going through literally thousands and thousands and thousands of chickens, it's hard to prevent disease completely no matter what you do. Someone with a small flock, even if they are the most ignorant and least knowledgeable person in the whole wide world, is going to have an easier time just because of the smaller number of birds they have. A small backyard flock IS less likely to have a Salmonella outbreak, which is the main concern with eating raw chicken. I wouldn't serve raw chicken to a total stranger, but if my friends or family asked for it AND I knew where the meat came from then I'd like to think I could rule out the possibility of a lawsuit as well.

 

[Judy]

Remember that salmonella can be passed from the hen in the egg, so there will never be a 100% guarantee. That said, I have no doubt at all that I have been exposed several times over the years. With a normal immune system and not too heavy a load of bacteria, I'm convinced most people never know they've been exposed. Not that i would chance a lawsuit.

For me, rare chicken is simply unappetizing, was long before I'd heard of salmonella. But I do not cook pork or lamb well done, at all.

 

[AussieAcres]

Eating foods raw, not just meat, is ideal. This is one of those subjects where you will have a definite line of though between two sides of the idea. Those who are on a bacteria/pathogen scare set in motion and enforced by the FDA and FSIS. On the flip side you have those who fallow a less commercialized food process. Ideally, this "debate" should be concentrated on facts about disease and nutrition.

Salmonella seems to be the first thing everyone is equating here so let me start off with saying when you analyze the risk of contracting salmonella from raw eggs, you will find that it is actually quite low. A study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture earlier this year (Risk Analysis April 2002 22(2):203-18 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12022671?dopt=Abstract) showed that of the 69 billion eggs produced annually, only 2.3 million of them are contaminated with salmonella.
So simple math suggests that only 0.003 percent of eggs are infected. The translation is that only one in every 30,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella. This gives you an idea of how uncommon this problem actually is. As for, within chicken meat, the ratio is along the same lines.

The primary reason for making sure you get plenty of raw food in your diet is due to what’s called ‘biophotons.’ Biophotons are the smallest physical units of light, which are stored in, and used by all biological organisms – including your body. Vital sun energy finds its way into your cells via the food you eat, in the form of these biophotons.

Cooking food also changes the meat (or veggies) on a molecular level. Nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are depleted, destroyed, and altered. The degree of depletion, destruction, and alteration is simply a matter of temperature, cooking method, and time. Up to 50% of the protein is coagulated. Much of this is rendered unusable. High temperatures also create cross-links in protein. Cross-linked proteins are implicated in many problems in the body, as well as being a factor in the acceleration of the aging process. Toxic substances and cooked "byproducts" are created. The higher the cooking temperature, the more toxins that are created. Frying and grilling are especially toxin-generating. Various carcinogenic and mutagenic substances and many free radicals are generated in cooked fats and proteins in particular.
Eating enzyme-dead food places a burden on your pancreas and other organs and overworks them, which eventually exhausts these organs. The digestion of cooked food uses valuable metabolic enzymes in order to help digest your food. Digestion of cooked food is much more energetically demanding than the digestion of raw food. In general, raw food is so much more easily digested that it passes through the digestive tract in a half to a third of the time it takes for cooked food.

The more you know about the science behind food (after all a kitchen is a science lab in a manner of speaking) the more you understand just how bad "everyday" foods in the markets are. One I encounter a lot more recently is the rush for "Organic" everything!! Organics opens a whole new can of mis-information in the food world, but for this instance I use a discussion I had this week. An acquaintance who thought they were eating much healthier by buying "Organic" skinless chicken breasts and frying them with a teaspoon of olive oil instead of vegetable oil. Its organic chicken...and olive oil is better for you right??? Problem is, Organics have their own labeling system as far as how organic said item is, but I was concentrating on the olive oil misconception. Olive oil is a good healthy oil, so long as you do NOT cook with it! The only oil that does not go carcinogenic and produce HCA's is coconut oil. HCA's are toxins that can bind to DNA and very high on the list of known cancer causes.

 

[mons02035]

I'm not a scientist or lab guy but I do have a very strong personal intrest in it and have read a bit and all that. I think as BossRoo said, ignorance is bliss when it comes to this stuff and I think BossRoo is 100% right on with this. IMHO. These germs are everywhere, no one is safe from them, wether home raised or commercial raised. I would say that home raised is a bit more at risk because they do not do the testing that the commercail guy does. That being said, I whole hardidly stand behind home raised products but not because I don't trust the commercial or I'm an enviroment nut, just because I think it's great that people can be self sufficient and take care of themselves and I think that is something we lose more and more of with every generation.

 

[honeydoll]

Aussieacres that was some great info! My brother is an avid hunter and he eats his wood duck rare, and says it is the tastiest duck he's ever had. I would try it once, but the rare meat scare is in my mind.

I ate what I though was a decent diet. But about 10 years ago I started to struggle with weight gain and high blood pressure. THere are many factors that contributed to my health, but I learned throught studing that diet was one of the leading causes. The people I have talked to that eat rare meat and raw fruits and vegies are some of the healthiest people I have seen. So it really has me thinking about it. I am only 39, but a couple of these people are in their 60s and look healthier than me. I mean, they look wonderful.

I wonder what rare chicken would taste like? I hear it is very tender and juicy. I thought rare meat would be tougher, I guess I am wrong about that.