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Who's looking forward to chlorinated chicken?


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Nah, it'll be fine. Let's just carry on encouraging intensive animal rearing with poor hygiene standards and create ever-greater risks of zoonotic emergence of novel pathogens. What could possibly go wrong?

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Just have to shop cleverer 

and keep an eye on product origin 

or buy the red tractor products.

 

Edited by Hamish
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30 minutes ago, acaie said:

Not me. Another broken promise.

Source?

Stuart.

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Or sign the petition, I have already...!

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5 minutes ago, stuart said:

Source?

Stuart.

It's been reported in several newspapers in recent days, eg https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chlorinated-chicken-us-trade-talks-boris-johnson-trump-a9549656.html although no announcements by govt at this stage, obvs.

While supermarkets may well be scrupulous about labelling etc due to consumer pressure, I'm sure we'll still see US low-quality (in animal welfare and environmental terms) chicken imported for catering, fast food etc. IMO we should be showing leadership internationally in improving animal welfare and food chain safety, not joining a race to the bottom.

Nigel

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We wouldn’t want to get chlorinated chicken imported here.  The animal welfare and low standards. There must be a health issue, so let’s scupper a trade deal with America. It’s not like we will need trade deals.

Of course we could carry on in Europe with a worse situation than we had before, just give in to EU everything they want, even give up sovereignty, continue with lack of investment in our industry, follow the laws because they have our interest at heart. Let’s maintain unfair access to our fish and pay billions for the privilege. With their animal welfare being second to none, you don’t see massive chicken factories or battery farms in france or see dogs chained up 24 house a day or donkeys worked hard in Spain, or see live Chickens piled into vans during their hot summer and sold door to door so they don’t need to buy a refrigerated van. 

We can always buy everything from China because their animal welfare is exemplary, and the human rights are second to none,  Their food standard are so high not to mention their products,  faultless oh yes and cheap surely we would want to give up.

Not to get a trade deal with America if we have to buy substandard Chicken in case the commercial outlets might buy them and secretly add them to the food chain. Look what effect it’s had on the Americans.  

Please don’t get me wrong I don’t suggest everything right in America everything bright in America as the song says. But is chlorinated chicken that big a deal to get a deal. When you look at what we buy from and what we sell to other countries even taking into account other standards all over the world?  Or should we just not get trade deals?

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Whisper it  - but nearly all of the fruit and veg we eat has been chlorine washed to reduce bacterial contamination. Why then is it so bad for chicken to be treated the same way?  It might just prevent a few cases of salmonella poisoning -  which can be caught from our non-chlorinated home-reared stuff if you don't cook it properly. 

No-one is going to be forced to buy it if they don't want. 

 

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I read somewhere that a condition of importing such things as chlorinated chicken from the US will be that the source is not to be marked on the product. If that’s true how do you choose?  

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I remember in 1988 when Edwina Currie resigned over salmonella in eggs, the statement that went something like "......3% of chickens going to slaughter have (at that time) salmonella, however 80% of the chicken leaving the slaughterhouse has salmonella..."

It was the re-use of the same water to wash down the slaughtered birds that transferred the virus to many additional carcases. The US presumably had similar problems and used chlorine bleach to sterilise the water and kill the virus.

Now I have heard nothing about the processes since, but I would like to know the slaughterhouse practices we have now in this country and the incidence of salmonella in chicken meat.

Don't misinterpret my words I am not in favour of importing any foodstuff  that we can "grow" in this country, but is the US chicken less infected than that which we produce now, I just would like  to know?

Alan

Edited by barkerwilliams
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4 hours ago, Bleednipple said:

It's been reported in several newspapers in recent days, eg https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chlorinated-chicken-us-trade-talks-boris-johnson-trump-a9549656.html although no announcements by govt at this stage, obvs.

While supermarkets may well be scrupulous about labelling etc due to consumer pressure, I'm sure we'll still see US low-quality (in animal welfare and environmental terms) chicken imported for catering, fast food etc. IMO we should be showing leadership internationally in improving animal welfare and food chain safety, not joining a race to the bottom.

Nigel

Hi Nigel 

Think we will be fighting a loosing battle in the long run. Why? Because while ever the population keeps increasing at the pace it is the drive for cheaper and increasing amounts of food are going to be inevitable resulting in lower welfare standards. China and 3rd World are good examples there ability to feed themselves is maxed out only China with its financial clout allows it to import what it needs and culturally animal welfare is well down the list of these countries or non existent resulting in environmental destruction, bush meat, bear, tiger farms again population greed driven.

Safe in the UK? No we can't feed ourselves either with a near doubling of the population from the 1940's even with intensive farming. Now with the possibility of 3 million more from Hong Kong to feed (who thought that one up?) COVID I predict is just the start of pandemics to come with virulence akin to ebola which will be natures way taking us down to a manageable population the planet can support bit like avian flue in a chicken house.

Feel sorry for the next generations who will have to face this.

Andy 

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I stopped eating chicken a while ago, and stopped eating beef after the Mad Cow thingy. Poor UK, having to lower itself to trade deals with the Yanks, such as they are, trying to copyright rice abroad and practice food dumping. That is tantamount to losing sovreignty, after asserting it in Brexit.

Very confusing altogether, in my modest opinion.

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As I understand it chlorination is an attempt to mitigate the effects of the appalling conditions the birds are reared in where disease is rife.  No thanks. 

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The UK has spent years and £M to improve the fate of all farmed animals.

Chlorination is a cheap way to overcome all that hard work and effort.

Then consider further down the line how can you cheapen the chlorination process - do not forget BSE - created by cheapening a process.

 

Roger

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16 hours ago, SuzanneH said:

Or sign the petition, I have already...!

Likewise. NFU Food standards petition

Otherwise, what's the bloody point of (rightly) having high animal welfare standards in this country?

Cheers, Richard

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14 hours ago, RobH said:

Whisper it  - but nearly all of the fruit and veg we eat has been chlorine washed to reduce bacterial contamination. Why then is it so bad for chicken to be treated the same way?  It might just prevent a few cases of salmonella poisoning -  which can be caught from our non-chlorinated home-reared stuff if you don't cook it properly. 

No-one is going to be forced to buy it if they don't want. 

 

I think others have kind of addressed that in later posts, but just to be clear, if I may - the objections to chlorinated poultry aren't about the chlorine, which is harmless of itself, it's that the need to chlorinate arises because of the US's poor practices and standards in poultry rearing and its impacts on animal welfare. And, although harder to get a firm handle on, the growing recognition of the connection between the most intensive factory farming methods and the risks of future human disease pandemics.

It's not a question of banning US poultry imports outright. If some US producers decide to rear chickens to the same standards that UK farmers are obliged to use (and hence not requiring chlorine washing), there would presumably be no objection to importing them.

The UK has over the years been a leader in many improvements in humane animal rearing: banning veal crates (1990), barren cages for battery hens (2012), and gestating sow stalls (2013). Other countries, in Europe and elsewhere, followed our lead. The idea that we are now prepared to abandon those standards just to satisfy the US factory farming lobby is abhorrent to many, including me.

Nigel

 

Edited by Bleednipple
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26 minutes ago, Bleednipple said:

 The idea that we are now prepared to abandon those standards just to satisfy the US factory farming lobby is abhorrent to many, including me.

I don't believe there is any suggestion that our own standards will be relaxed in any way and neither do I believe we have any right to dictate to other countries how they do things. Personally I find ritual killing methods to be abhorrent but those still seem to be accepted here, as is the use of antibiotics in feed which is far more of a potential danger to us.  

As I said before  - if you don't like it, just don't buy it.   

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I am not sure what the problem is with using chlorine to disinfect the chicken.  We drink it in our water and spent a long time in our youth diving into chlorinated swimming  pools. I know it was a problem in the 1st WW in concentrated form when pumped into the trenches but has been used ever since in diluted form

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3 hours ago, RobH said:

 

I don't believe there is any suggestion that our own standards will be relaxed in any way and neither do I believe we have any right to dictate to other countries how they do things. Personally I find ritual killing methods to be abhorrent but those still seem to be accepted here, as is the use of antibiotics in feed which is far more of a potential danger to us.  

As I said before  - if you don't like it, just don't buy it.   

I very much agree with you Rob about antibiotic use in animal feed. It seems to me practically insane that any country, let alone rich ones like the UK, allows antibiotics to be used for anything except welfare purposes ie to treat a sick animal. And yet their use prophylactically (ie to allow intensive rearing conditions) is still routine in the EU as well as UK, and even as a growth promoter in the USA - the EU at least banned that in 2006. The UK has at least recognised the issue and targets have been set for reductions in use.

While you or I might choose not to buy factory farmed chicken, if others do so (anywhere in the world) we're all exposed to the risks of dying in the next avian flu outbreak or from an antibiotic-resistant infection.

So while I also agree we shouldn't dictate to other countries about what they do - and it would be futile anyway on its own - I believe we should absolutely not be complicit in risk-taking behaviours by allowing access to our markets for products we wouldn't allow to be produced here. (And, to be clear, yes I think we should absolutely be banning all non-therapeutic antibiotic use in animals on our own shores).

Nigel

 

Edited by Bleednipple
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Clearly standards in the past needed improvement here and abroad,  I can’t comment on whether America treat animals differently less humane than here in UK or than in EU. I don’t see the reasoning behind, us and Europe believing the American people currently work in inferior conditions or they are more or less caring about animal cruelty there than we are here.  Unless the reasoning is just protectionism rather than welfare, maybe other will wish to enlighten me.

I assumed the purpose of chlorinated chicken was a precaution rather than a necessity due to lack of standards, just a wish to remove harmful bacteria. Although  that’s my assumption not based on known fact.  We eat meat we breed animals for that purpose, it is a large part of our economy. We export it and import it, and to do that we kill them, if we are really concerned for the welfare of animals, become vegetarians or vegans, that’s a sure way to know no animal have been harmed here, in the EU, USA or any other country as a result of your eating requirements. 

Like others on hear it’s some of the practices we have undertaken  right here that has been a major concern to me, feeding a herbivore meat and bone meal, the cause I understand of the outbreak of BSE. The use of antibiotics and spreading human waste over grassland all have appeared crazy to me. So should we really refuse a trade deal with the USA because they want to sell us these Chickens, for those of us with children wanting their working life to return in the future perhaps not.

Edited by Misfit
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