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I thought I was simply preparing dinner for my family.
The chicken looked normal enough from the outside, so I brought it home, prepared my ingredients, and started getting everything ready for the pan. But when I cut into the meat, I immediately noticed something that made me stop.
The inside had an unusual greenish-yellow color.
Then came another detail that was even more concerning: the chicken had a strange smell.
At that point, the question wasn’t whether dinner was going to be delicious anymore. It was whether the chicken was safe to eat.
If you’ve ever opened a package of chicken and discovered an unusual green, yellow, purple, or dark area inside, you may have wondered exactly the same thing: What happened to this meat?
The answer isn’t always as simple as “the chicken has gone bad.” There are several possible reasons poultry can develop unusual colors, and some are related to the bird’s muscle tissue rather than ordinary spoilage.
One possibility is a condition sometimes called deep pectoral myopathy, also known as “green muscle disease.” It can occur in chickens when a deep breast muscle experiences reduced blood supply, causing muscle tissue to become damaged and eventually develop a greenish discoloration.
This condition is particularly associated with heavily developed breast muscles and certain types of poultry production. The discoloration can be surprisingly vivid, which is why people who encounter it may think the chicken has somehow been contaminated with a green substance.
But there is an important distinction.
A greenish area caused by muscle damage is not necessarily the same thing as bacterial spoilage.
That means the color alone cannot tell you whether a piece of chicken is safe or unsafe to eat.
And in the situation shown here, there is another factor that matters enormously: the unusual smell.
Fresh raw chicken can have a mild natural odor, but chicken that smells strongly unpleasant, sour, rotten, or otherwise abnormal should not be treated as safe simply because someone believes the discoloration has an innocent explanation.
Food safety is not the place to take chances.
If raw chicken looks unusual and also has a clearly abnormal odor, the safest choice is to stop preparing it and discard it rather than trying to rescue it by washing, trimming, marinating, or cooking it.
Cooking is not a magic reset button for spoiled food.
High temperatures can destroy many harmful microorganisms, but they do not necessarily eliminate every hazard that may have developed in improperly stored or spoiled food. In addition, washing raw chicken can spread potentially harmful bacteria around the sink, countertops, utensils, and other foods.
So what should you do if you discover something like this?
First, don’t taste it.
Even a tiny taste is unnecessary when you already have concerns about the meat.
Second, don’t continue preparing the chicken alongside other ingredients.
Move the package away from ready-to-eat foods and clean surfaces that may have come into contact with the raw meat.
Third, dispose of the chicken appropriately and wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water.
Kitchen utensils, cutting boards, countertops, and other surfaces that touched the raw chicken should also be cleaned and sanitized appropriately.
And if you purchased the chicken recently, consider keeping the packaging and receipt. You may want to contact the store or manufacturer and report what you found, particularly if the product was sold as fresh and within its stated use-by or sell-by period.
You can also take clear photographs of the unusual meat and the package information. This can be useful if you decide to request a refund or report a potential food-quality problem.
But let’s return to the green color itself.
Why would chicken muscle ever turn green?
The phenomenon known as deep pectoral myopathy is associated with muscle damage caused by inadequate blood flow. In certain chickens, particularly birds with large breast muscles, the deep pectoral muscle can become compressed during vigorous movement of the wings.
Because the muscle is surrounded by relatively firm structures, swelling can increase pressure within the area and further restrict circulation.
The affected tissue can eventually die and change color.
Early in the process, the damaged muscle may appear darker or reddish. As the tissue changes, it can develop greenish coloration.
This is one reason people sometimes discover a striking green section after cutting into a chicken breast.
It can look alarming.