Cathy Isom tells us why we might want to think twice before giving a peck to some cute and fury friends. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Chicken Peck
If you’ve ever kissed a chicken and never gotten sick, count your blessings. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a rise in salmonella cases due to more and more people keeping and raising chickens. And the alarming number of people 
have apparently contracted it from kissing their cute little fowl companions. According to the CDC’s research, 13-percent of the chicken-related salmonella cases they studied from 1990 to 2014 were due, in part, to some human-on-chicken affection.
Of the cases they studied, the CDC says, “Most contact occurred at the patients’ home, and high-risk behaviors included keeping poultry inside the house and having close contact, such as holding, snuggling, or kissing poultry.” Forty-nine percent of patients studied said they had snuggled baby chicks, and forty-six percent of the CDC’s respondents kept chickens in the house. A whole ten-percent of respondents said they kept chickens in their bedroom!