And cooking the shit out of it won’t necessarily protect you.

Americans love chicken, but it doesn’t always love us back. We eat way more of it than any other meat, and it triggers more foodborne disease outbreak-related illnesses than any other food, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The main reason it makes people sick is because it carries salmonella. 

Back in 2015, the government agency that oversees the safety of the nation’s meat supply, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), introduced a new testing regime at slaughterhouses to try and reduce the amount of salmonella consumers encounter on their chicken. But the program doesn’t appear to be working very well. According to data released in June, more than a third of the country’s slaughterhouses are currently failing to meet safety standards developed to try and prevent salmonella contamination on the chicken we buy.