Expert: Dana Krempels, Ph.D. - 8/10/2010

Question
I cooked a chicken breast in the oven today and when it was done I was breaking it up to put on a salad.  I noticed a bunch of dark reddish colored worms throughout the breast, they were thin like as thin as a pin and about an inch long.  I thought they were veins, but when I pulled them out they seemed to be individual worms. They were cooked with the chicken but still dark red and at one end they were much darker than the rest of the body.  What can these be?

Answer
Dear Jennifer,

I've heard of another person finding this type of thing in a chicken breast.  These sound like typical nematode parasites, though I don't know the species that infects connective tissue and muscle in domestic fowl.  The gapeworm is a common parasite of the trachea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapeworm

But this probably isn't the same thing.

For a positive identification, you might need to send these to a parasitology lab (though the cooking process might make this impossible) via your local veterinarian.

Hope this helps get you started.  

But I'm not sure I'd be buying chicken from that store again...
(Don't worry; if the meat was fully cooked, the worst that would happen is that you'd have a little extra protein in your meal.)

Dana