I'm not saying it's seared. Before you do a long cook sous vide, if you're concerned about lactobacillus (which won't hurt you but will make your entire product taste and smell like dirty socks), you can very quickly dunk whatever you're cooking in boiling water to kill surface bacteria. Doing that has no discernible impact on the texture or appearance of the meat (except it might turn a thin layer of chicken flesh opaque).
I'm wondering if the raw chicken people might do something similar, since all the pathogens they're concerned about will be on the surface.