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Health and disease (humans)

As of 2022, no clinical trials have assessed poultry intake on human health. Poultry meat and eggs provide nutritionally beneficial food containing protein of high quality. This is accompanied by low levels of fat which have a favourable mix of fatty acids. Chicken meat contains about two to three times as much polyunsaturated fat as most types of red meat when measured by weight. However, for boneless, skinless chicken breast, the amount is much lower. 100 grams (3.5 oz) of raw chicken breast contains 2 grams (0.071 oz) of fat and 22 grams (0.78 oz) of protein, compared to 9 grams (0.32 oz) of fat and 20 grams (0.71 oz) of protein for the same portion of raw beef flank steak.

A 2011 study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute showed that 47% of the meat and poultry sold in United States grocery stores was contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, and 52% of the bacteria concerned showed resistance to at least three groups of antibiotics. Thorough cooking of the product would kill these bacteria, but a risk of cross-contamination from improper handling of the raw product is still present. Also, some risk is present for consumers of poultry meat and eggs to bacterial infections such as Salmonella and Campylobacter. Poultry products may become contaminated by these bacteria during handling, processing, marketing, or storage, resulting in food-borne illness if the product is improperly cooked or handled.

In general, avian influenza is a disease of birds caused by bird-specific influenza A virus that is not normally transferred to people; however, people in contact with live poultry are at the greatest risk of becoming infected with the virus and this is of particular concern in areas such as Southeast Asia, where the disease is endemic in the wild bird population and domestic poultry can become infected. The virus possibly could mutate to become highly virulent and infectious in humans and cause an influenza pandemic.

Bacteria can be grown in the laboratory on nutrient culture media, but viruses need living cells in which to replicate. Many vaccines to infectious diseases can be grown in fertilised chicken eggs. Millions of eggs are used each year to generate the annual flu vaccine requirements, a complex process that takes about six months after the decision is made as to what strains of virus to include in the new vaccine. A problem with using eggs for this purpose is that people with egg allergies are unable to be immunised, but this disadvantage may be overcome as new techniques for cell-based rather than egg-based culture become available. Cell-based culture will also be useful in a pandemic when it may be difficult to acquire a sufficiently large quantity of suitable sterile, fertile eggs.