(Ed: Source: ThePoultrySite on October 8, 2013. This is quite timely as there have been several stories of late about E. Coli in chickens. Cooking the chicken so that the internal temperature reaches 165° F. will kill the bacteria in the chicken.)

A study at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and four other institutions found antibiotic resistant E. coli in chickens from a range of production methods, but the greatest amount was found in kosher chickens. “Kosher chickens carried the greatest amount of antibiotic-resistant E. coli, while organic chicken showed antibiotic-resistant bacteria levels just as high as conventional chicken. Only chickens ‘raised without antibiotics’ (RWA) came in with reduced but still contaminated, levels of the E. coli ‘superbug”. “The chicken researchers are from the Horace Mann Bronx Campus, Translational Genomics Research Institute of Flagstaff, NAU and George Washington University in Washington DC. Dr Bruce Hungate, director of the Ecosystem Science and Society Center, and NAU professor of biology, headed the team. The research was funded by the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research and the Ecosystem Science and Society Center, both at NAU.”
The researchers purchased 213 samples of raw chicken from 15 locations in the New York City metropolitan area from April to June, 2012. “The study found that strains of E. coli isolated from samples in the RWA category tended to be resistant to fewer drugs ‘but the difference was not significant versus conventional and organic, which did not differ from each other’ “.