system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does poultry need to be fully cooked to a specific temperature when it's safe to consume beef that's basically half cooked or 'rare'?
gpt
Birds and cows have different types of muscle tissue. Several common pathogens can penetrate bird tissue completely, but only reside on the surface of cow tissue. Cooking kills them. This means that cooking the surface of say, a steak, is all you need to render that steak safe, while for poultry you need to cook the entire way in.

It's also why it's *not* generally safe to eat raw mincemeat/hamburger. You need to cook that stuff the entire way through, because the surface has been mixed with the interior.