diff --git a/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/KafkaUnboundedReader.java b/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/KafkaUnboundedReader.java
index 866dfd487108..fa173c76a946 100644
--- a/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/KafkaUnboundedReader.java
+++ b/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/KafkaUnboundedReader.java
@@ -53,7 +53,6 @@
 import org.apache.beam.sdk.transforms.windowing.BoundedWindow;
 import org.apache.beam.sdk.util.Preconditions;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.annotations.VisibleForTesting;
-import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.base.Stopwatch;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.collect.ImmutableList;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.collect.Iterators;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.io.Closeables;
@@ -411,7 +410,6 @@ public boolean offsetBasedDeduplicationSupported() {
   private static Instant initialWatermark = BoundedWindow.TIMESTAMP_MIN_VALUE;
 
   private KafkaMetrics kafkaResults = KafkaSinkMetrics.kafkaMetrics();
-  private Stopwatch stopwatch = Stopwatch.createUnstarted();
 
   private Set<String> kafkaTopics;
 
@@ -580,13 +578,12 @@ private void consumerPollLoop() {
       while (!closed.get()) {
         try {
           if (records.isEmpty()) {
-            stopwatch.start();
+            long startMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
             records = consumer.poll(KAFKA_POLL_TIMEOUT.getMillis());
-            stopwatch.stop();
+            long elapsedMillis = System.currentTimeMillis() - startMillis;
             for (String kafkaTopic : kafkaTopics) {
               kafkaResults.updateSuccessfulRpcMetrics(
-                  kafkaTopic,
-                  java.time.Duration.ofMillis(stopwatch.elapsed(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)));
+                  kafkaTopic, java.time.Duration.ofMillis(elapsedMillis));
             }
           } else if (availableRecordsQueue.offer(
               records, RECORDS_ENQUEUE_POLL_TIMEOUT.getMillis(), TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)) {
diff --git a/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/ReadFromKafkaDoFn.java b/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/ReadFromKafkaDoFn.java
index a05abba06e75..8894cbf59520 100644
--- a/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/ReadFromKafkaDoFn.java
+++ b/sdks/java/io/kafka/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/kafka/ReadFromKafkaDoFn.java
@@ -58,7 +58,6 @@
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.annotations.VisibleForTesting;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.base.Joiner;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.base.MoreObjects;
-import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.base.Stopwatch;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.cache.CacheBuilder;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.cache.CacheLoader;
 import org.apache.beam.vendor.guava.v32_1_2_jre.com.google.common.cache.LoadingCache;
@@ -567,19 +566,14 @@ public ProcessContinuation processElement(
     long expectedOffset = tracker.currentRestriction().getFrom();
     consumer.resume(Collections.singleton(topicPartition));
     consumer.seek(topicPartition, expectedOffset);
-    final Stopwatch pollTimer = Stopwatch.createUnstarted();
 
     final KafkaMetrics kafkaMetrics = KafkaSinkMetrics.kafkaMetrics();
     try {
       while (Duration.ZERO.compareTo(remainingTimeout) < 0) {
-        // TODO: Remove this timer and use the existing fetch-latency-avg	metric.
-        // A consumer will often have prefetches waiting to be returned immediately in which case
-        // this timer may contribute more latency than it measures.
-        // See https://shipilev.net/blog/2014/nanotrusting-nanotime/ for more information.
-        pollTimer.reset().start();
+        long startMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
         // Fetch the next records.
         final ConsumerRecords<byte[], byte[]> rawRecords = consumer.poll(remainingTimeout);
-        final Duration elapsed = pollTimer.elapsed();
+        final Duration elapsed = Duration.ofMillis(System.currentTimeMillis() - startMillis);
         try {
           remainingTimeout = remainingTimeout.minus(elapsed);
         } catch (ArithmeticException e) {