Not being exposed to air, for one. That's why it's safe to eat a rare steak (where the surfaces exposed to air are cooked to kill bacteria) and why it's not safe to eat rare hamburger (where all the meat has been exposed to air through grinding the meat).
Sure, but this is chicken, which is already notably porous, which is why it’s generally considered unsafe to eat rare chicken, even if it’s been well cooked on the outside.
At least for that aspect, I’d think the protection is less relevant. I would be very curious how that’s handled with other meats, like lab grown beef. I’d be more hesitant about lab grown beef, if the cooking instructions prevented cooking it rare.
They exist to be an ultimate authority, and that constrains them from presenting a compromised position, even if that compromise is something people find widely acceptable. The USDA simply isn't in a position to guarantee enough safety in this case to balance against their liability.
Safety is compromise. Eating rare steak is risky, but most of the risk is mitigated. Getting sick from eating rare steak is, itself, rare.
USDA has been trying and failing for decades to make a visual aid that accurately communicates the balance of a healthy diet. and they ban foods that people in other countries have eaten for 1000 years (while allowing them for pets). they are both inaccurate and overly conservative with nutrition and health guidance
Look at almost any menu in any restaurant that serves steak and you’ll find a little asterisk, and a note about the USDA’s recommendation at the bottom of the menu.
The USDA has not made it illegal or unlawful to cook steak rare. They recommend against it. A lot of people like rare steak, and will pay a restaurant to prepare a rare steak. So they do.
They recommend 145°F, which is medium-well. Experiential outcomes suggest pretty strongly to me that forcing all steak to be cooked medium-well or greater is wildly overly conservative.
I do not mean that. (That would be experimental rather than experiential.)
Order of magnitude, ~15% of beef consumed is quality steak cuts. US residents on average eats 67 pounds of beef (so 10 pounds of steak) per year. If eating steak cooked less than medium-well was dangerous in a practical/meaningful sense, it would be common knowledge (based on lived experience) that steak should be catastrophically over-cooked as a food safety measure.
