Seafood vs. Chicken Safety

Which is more likely to cause disease in humans – eating seafood or eating chicken? This is Dr. Steven Andrew Davis, Speaking of Health. Naturally one would hope that neither seafood nor chicken would cause disease in human beings and, fortunately, most of the time that’s true. There are those who note that seafood can carry toxins, contaminates and viruses into the human body. But data from the Centers for Disease control, the principle source of information about illness caused by foods, clearly indicates that seafood does not cause illness in either alarming number or great diversity. And the Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with putting the seafood safety issue into perspective for the public, says that “pound for pound, chicken is 200 times more likely to cause illness than seafood – except shellfish.” Ah, and there’s the epidemiologic rub. Shellfish that is raw or undercooked is “100 more times more likely to cause illness than (is) chicken. The potential problem with uncooked shellfish such as raw clams, oyster or mussels is that such shellfish can be contaminated by viruses “that are carried into aquatic habitats in sewage”. So ultimately what mattes when it comes to illness carried by seafood and chicken is how these products are harvested and how they are prepared. Thoroughly cooking any animal product reduces the risk for infection, and growing or obtaining them from environments know to be clean understandably reduces the risk even more.

For a copy of this script, access our web site, speakingofhealth.com. Speaking of Health, I’m Dr. Steven Andrew Davis for CBS News.