Normalising nastiness: US ambassador calls for acceptance of chlorine-washed chicken
Chicken: if this one was of the US chlorine-washed variety, do you think Boris Johnson would be soiling his hands with it?
It doesn’t matter what Theresa Villiers says; people in the UK are being told chlorine-washed chicken is “delicious” in a bid to brainwash us into accepting the substandard fare post-Brexit.
Ms Villiers, the Environment Secretary, has said chlorine-washed chicken would not be allowed into the UK as part of a prospective trade deal with the United States.
But in a letter The Sunday Times seemed happy to publish, US ambassador Woody Johnson (yes, that’s his real name and I wonder if he realises its euphemistic significance) demanded that chlorine-washed chicken should remain on the table during talks (I know; that’s hardly hygienic).
He claimed chlorine washes are “the most effective and economical way to fight food-borne illness” – but that’s not the point.
The issue is not only about making sure the meat is free of germs that could have attached themselves to it after slaughter; it’s about American-raised chickens being kept in such poor conditions that they are riddled with disease.
We would be eating diseased meat. At least, that’s the implication.
And there’s another question: if this spokesman for US chicken really did care about food standards, why not advocate that American producers raise theirs to the UK level? Why must we always accept the lowest standards available?
The trouble is that, by maintaining it as an issue – possibly one that could stop a trade deal, and by pushing it to an impressionable public as a viable alternative, the ambassador is normalising it; making it acceptable.
What does it say about our government that it even entertains such notions?
Source: Johnson calls for ‘delicious’ chlorine-washed chicken in the UK after Brexit | inews
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Given the USA’s scant regard for European safety (nor even it’s own) I would recommend the greatest scrutiny before accepting anything from there.
Example: The Grenfell fire was started by a dodgy US appliance and was accelerated by unsafe US cladding, the Tory council embracing profits before people philosophy..
Boeing, Flint Water, Trump abolishing US water safety rules…. just a few examples.
It’s not the chlorine itself that is the problem. Apparently you can’t taste it. Chlorine only kills 90% of germs and that’s not enough. As the article below says “US rates of campylobacter infection are 10 times higher than in the UK. The US records hundreds of salmonella deaths a year; the UK has in recent years recorded none.”
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/03/the-truth-about-chlorinated-chicken-review-an-instant-appetite-ruiner
“We would be eating diseased meat. At least, that’s the implication.” Surely, this is the issue. We don’t know. I have less of a problem with the chicken that I do with the beef and dairy. I spent time in the U.S.A. The chicken is fine. I didn’t see how it was reared but then I don’t here, either. There is a blossoming organic food market, there and it is entirely possible to eat VERY well. I worry, when I see labels like “never contains antibiotics.” Why should you have to label your products thus?
What our people need to do is investigate the animal welfare standards. There is too much speculation and unnecessary scaremongering, in the media. We need facts.That said, if people don’t want this chicken, they will neither buy it, nor eat it. Before people get all high and mighty about American food, they should remember that we were eating horse.
Yes – we need to be a lot more discerning, I think, at the point of sale.
The answer of course is don’t eat chicken, or any other corpses of murder victims. It’s not food.