The degree of overlap between the E. coli strains from meat and those found in samples from patients with UTIs was striking, says Tim Johnson, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota who studies poultry diseases and genomics.
The bigger risk may be poor kitchen hygiene, says University of Minnesota's Tim Johnson. "It's a common misperception that most of the transmission from chicken to human occurs by eating undercooked meat. And the fact is that the vast majority of people fully cook [it], especially poultry," he says.