Health Canada

Authority

Official guidance

Territories

CA

Primacy

primary

Commercial interest

none

Retrieved

2026-08-15

State

Read and citable

Original document

THE DOCUMENT BBQHQ REFUSED TO GUESS AT. Catalogue H164-370/2024E-PDF, ISBN 978-0-660-72058-6, © His Majesty the King in Right of Canada 2024. A web search described this chart accurately and BBQHQ still would not write a safety rule from a search summary; the figures now in the catalogue come from the chart itself. THE LESSON IS THE OLD ONE, FOR THE FOURTH TIME: a retrieval failure is evidence about a route. Four routes to one host all failed and the document was never the problem — a different arm of the same government was serving it the whole time.

Safety

• “Pieces, for example, breasts, legs, thighs, wings 74 165 ... Whole 82 180”

  Health Canada's cooking temperatures chart gives WHOLE poultry — chicken, duck and turkey — 82 °C (180 °F), and poultry PIECES such as breasts, legs, thighs and wings 74 °C (165 °F).

  Form:

  The answer to a long-standing open question. The 82 °C and 74 °C figures are not a disagreement and never were: they are two food FORMS in one table from one authority, and the difference is a whole bird against a portion of one.

  The United States gives ALL poultry 74 °C. Canada gives a whole bird eight degrees more. Two countries, one continent, different judgements, neither in error — which is the argument of the whole safety model arriving between neighbours.

  What it covers:

  Consumer guidance. The chart is published for people cooking at home.

• “Ground meat, for example, burgers, meatballs, sausages 71 160”

  Health Canada gives ground beef, veal and lamb — burgers, meatballs and sausages — 71 °C (160 °F), and ground poultry 74 °C (165 °F).

  71 °C for ground red meat is the same figure USDA FSIS gives consumers.

• “Pieces and whole cuts, for example, steaks and roasts medium-rare 63 145 medium 71 160 well done 77 170”

  Health Canada gives beef, veal and lamb pieces and whole cuts three figures BY DONENESS — 63 °C medium-rare, 71 °C medium, 77 °C well done — and gives mechanically tenderized beef and veal 63 °C with an instruction to turn the steak over at least twice during cooking.

  Shape:

  A safety chart that speaks in doneness, which is unusual and useful. Most authorities give one safety figure and leave doneness to the cook; Canada publishes the ladder, so a Canadian reader choosing medium-rare is choosing inside official guidance rather than against it.

  The mechanically tenderized row carries a handling instruction rather than only a temperature, which matches BBQHQ's existing claim that tenderised meat behaves like mince.

• “Pieces and whole cuts, for example, bone-in chops, boneless loin chops, rib roast, loin roast 71 160 ... Fish 70 158”

  Health Canada gives pork pieces and whole cuts — bone-in chops, boneless loin chops, rib roast and loin roast — 71 °C (160 °F), and fish 70 °C (158 °F); shellfish and crustaceans 74 °C, and leftovers 74 °C.

  The sharpest disagreement in the catalogue between two neighbours. Canada gives a pork chop 71 °C; USDA FSIS gives 63 °C with a three-minute rest. That is eight degrees and a rest interval between two countries whose supermarkets sell the same cuts. Fish diverges too: 70 °C against the American 63 °C.

  Canada's chart attaches no rest interval to any row.

• In Canada, whole poultry should reach 82 °C (180 °F) and poultry pieces 74 °C (165 °F).
• In Canada, ground beef, veal and lamb should reach 71 °C (160 °F) and ground poultry 74 °C (165 °F).
• In Canada, beef, veal and lamb pieces and whole cuts are given three safety figures by doneness: 63 °C medium-rare, 71 °C medium and 77 °C well done. Mechanically tenderized beef and veal are given 63 °C and must be turned at least twice during cooking.
• In Canada, pork pieces and whole cuts should reach 71 °C (160 °F), and fish 70 °C (158 °F). No rest interval is attached to either.

If this source changes, these are the claims that need rechecking. That is the point of recording provenance per claim rather than per page.