Destructive and nondestructive sampling procedures were compared for Escherichia coli and Salmonella spp. detection in 60 fresh chicken carcasses, which were submitted to the following sampling procedures: rinsing, skin swabbing, tissue excision, and skin excision; the proximity or not to the cloacae region was also considered. The obtained results were compared to identify significant differences (p<0.05). Forty eight chicken carcasses were positive for E. coli, and five were positive for Salmonella spp. For E. coli, nonsignificant differences were observed between rinsing and tissue excision, rinsing and skin excision, and skin excision and tissue excision (p>0.05), thus indicating equivalencies between these techniques. Skin swabbing produced a statistically significant lower frequency of positive results (p<0.05) than all other techniques for E. coli, thus indicating its inadequacy for detection of this microorganism. For Salmonella spp., no significant differences were observed between the sampling techniques (p>0.05), possibly due to the low overall frequency of positive carcasses. No significant differences in the number of positive samples (E. coli or Salmonella spp.) were observed between samples collected near or far from the cloacae region (p>0.05), regardless of the sampling technique. The obtained results demonstrate that the tested sampling techniques were equivalent for Salmonella spp. detection in chicken carcasses, as observed for E. coli with the exception of skin swabbing.