- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26864906
Britain must allow US chlorine-washed chicken into UK markets if it wants relief from sweeping tariffs, Donald Trump has indicated.
It comes after the UK failed to avoid tariffs imposed on the global economy, with the US president slapping a 10 per cent levies on all British exports to the United States.
…
In a statement published alongside the tariff announcement, the White House said: “The UK maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict US exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products.”
It suggested that Britain’s ban on chlorinated chicken was among a range of “non-tariff barriers” that limit the US’s ability to trade.
The UK has long ruled out allowing imports of chlorine-washed chicken from the US due to health concerns, with Downing Street on Thursday reiterating its manifesto commitment to high food standards.
Asked whether the UK could allow imports of chlorine washed chicken in order to appease the US, the prime minister’s officials spokesperson said: “Our position on that is unchanged. You’ve got the manifesto commitment on food standards, which obviously remains.”
…
The last major polling done on the issue, conducted in 2020, revealed that 80 per cent of Britons are opposed to allowing imports to the UK, and the same proportion is also against allowing chicken products that have been farmed using hormones.
There is also growing pressure from the farming industry to rule out concessions on the issue, amid fears it could undercut British farmers and drive down food standards.
Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.
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A 2014 report by US non-profit Consumer Reports found that 97 per cent of 300 American chicken breasts tested contained harmful bacteria, including Salmonella, campylobacter and E.Coli.
Around half of the chicken breasts tested also contained at least one type of bacteria that was resistant to three or more antibiotics.
Meanwhile, if you ate a large amount of chlorinated chicken – the equivalent to 5 per cent of your body weight in one day –you could be exposed to harmful levels of the chemical compound known as chlorate,
Yeah, I’d suggest holding out on this one. The way US farms raise chickens is deplorable and leads to the spread of disease.
Americans tend to be unhealthy af for a reason. Regulatory capture is a major issue in our ever more corrupt government.
I’m glad people say these things, because it reminds me that the death of critical thought isn’t strictly an American crisis
We are fed garbage from birth and become immediately addicted to it. And no one knows how to cook anymore (exaggeration, but not by too much).
That’s absolutely
I think we should not overinterpret this. Lets walk through it backwards.
5% of your body weight in chicken in one day? Assuming you are a small thin person of 55 kg. That means you would need to eat around 2.9 kg of chicken in a day. If you were a 80kg tall person, you’d be looking at eating 4 kg of chicken in a day. Neither is realistic imo.
Now antibiotic resistance bacteria definetly is an issue.
As for harmful bacteria including Salmonella… Unless there is data to compare with from other countries that does not mean much in itself. Raw chicken is notorious for giving food poisioning and being much more dangerous in that regard than raw beef, pork, or even fresh fish. I got a very bad food poisoning from undercooked chicken not to long ago and that was in the EU.
Doesn’t mean that US farming practices aren’t much worse than most EU standards (if enforced), but these metrics mentioned by themselves are not the best indicators for that.
I am a small and thin person of 40kg. Now would I realistically eat 2kg chicken in one day? That would be two whole chickens, which is not impossible but unlikely as I don’t really like chicken.
Would I still prefer my food not to contain a potential risky chemical? Absolutely.I agree. I think there is better arguments to be made for that though. More interesting than short term health effects would be health effects from long term exposure. Rather than just stating the presence of Bacteria, spread of diseases like “Bird flu” that could also infect humans or the building of multi-resistant Bacteria in industrial farming is more relevant than the presence of Salmonella, which is quite prevalent in chicken, even under good farming practices.
Every chemical is potentially risky in sufficient amounts, even water.
You’d die from water poisoning before that would matter. 2kg chicken in 24 hours is doable. Just imagine someone who likes chicken eating one chicken in the evening and one the next day for lunch. That’s already the dangerous amount. Or imagine a kid with an even lower weight eating one chicken.
Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.
God, what a sniveling excuse for a politician.
Nigel Farage is a trump suck up who was literally paid off or bribed by Elon Musk I would just ignore everything he ever says
Pretends to be a nationalist as well.
generally kinda fucked up to think about raw meat being bulk shipped across oceans anyways
Oh boy if you think that’s fucked up: They take American chickens, send them to China to process, then ship them back to the USA to sell to us.
Of course, the crazy works both ways: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-is-china-treating-north-carolina-like-the-developing-world-122892/
Whatever is going on in that article, the Carolinas are developing
countriesstates. Most of America is, really.I have heard Arkansas compared to Cuba and been found similar in terms of economic development.
The only time that doesn’t seem f-ed up is when you stand outside the processing plants, here or there…
I think it’s better than cooked meat which spoils quicker
The UK maintains non-science-based standards
Maybe look at who is in charge of your health department before your start complaining about “non-science-based standards”
They only say “Science-Based” as a dogwhistle to mean “Ignoring what science says about transpeople and substituting my own evidence based on ignorance and vibes.”
The “head” of any department is often not a scientist. Scientists conduct technical work, they don’t manage departments or orgs.
Right, but in order to be “science based” you do have to be led by someone who actually believes in and follows scientific consensus.
Not someone who doesn’t believe viruses are the cause of disease, wants to revisit the fraudulent claim that vaccines cause autism, doesn’t understand that people will die if you stop pasteurising milk etc.
The criticism isn’t that RFK isn’t a scientist.
Yuck! American “food”. In general, not just chicken.
I was in Atlanta recently, and our allergy kid wanted to eat a cake at a family party, so I told them to check the ingredients. They couldn’t understand the list and brought it to me. There was no wonder, the list was full of artificial everything. And here I thought the UK’s UPF was bad - I was shocked that cake was even considered food.
Well, with American bread being so loaded with corn syrup that it is considered “cake” in Europe, one should not be surprised.
And as the American attitude to those “artificial everythings” is to include them as long as they are not proven unsafe, in contrast to the European that you can only include them if they have proven generally safe, there are a lot of things you won’t find in European ingredient lists. For some of those items, it takes the US decades to withdraw them from the “suitable for food” list, sometimes even after some thrid world countries considered them illegal.
This is honestly just a weird talking point I see online. I’m sure some bread is marked as “cake” or whatever but that’s not what most Americans eat.
I just checked my bread (which doesn’t come from a bakery) and the entire loaf has 6 grams of sugar in it. And you can’t make bread without sugar.
OK but have you ever been to western Europe and eatern bread? Because I’ve spent a lot of time in the US eating bread and it’s not like European bread, not at all.
This is honestly just a weird talking point I see online.
It is not that weird - Subways bread is rated as “cake” at least in Ireland.
And like I said elsewhere. Fast food doesn’t represent the average Americans diet.
Fast food may not, but convenience food does. Which is not that much different ingredient- and qualitywise. With (according to statista) 70% of Americans eating convenience food, one could say this is the average American food staple. People who actually cook their own food like me have become rare.
Do you have a link to your source? That’s not one of the reports that Statista has listed
Yes, for tax purposes. It says nothing about the nutritional content.
It is rated as such because of the amount of sugars in it.
I make 2 big bread loaves every week, and have literally never put sugar in it. Salt and flour, sourdough starter, water. That’s it.
The case they’re specifically talking about is an instance in Ireland where Subway was sued about their bread containing enough sugar to be classified, under Irish law, as cake, not bread.
Yeast requires sugar to create the carbon dioxide to make dough rise. In your case (and in most), it’s feeding off the sugar in the flour. Generally, all purpose flour has about 0.5/cup.
And, this might be hard for you to believe, fast food doesn’t represent the average Americans diet.
Starch is nothing more then a polysacharide, it’s all sugar
Yes. That is the point of my comment. Thank you
It’s not so much sugar in the flour but amylase in the flour turning starch into simpler sugars. If you add sugar to your dough it means that you’re either not giving enough time to autolyse, or you’re making cake. Either way it’s not proper bread. And yes this also applies to non-sourdough bread. You need a minimum of two or three hours of autolysis for the dough to be nicely digestible and workable on the benchtop, there’s dough conditioners which can imitate part of that but well then you’re getting American “bread”. A typical German process develop the sourdough for about 1 1/2 days, then mix the final dough, let it rest for 2-3 hours (Stockgare, depending on temperature, humidity etc), then form it, then 1 - 1 1/2 hours of final leavening (Stückgare). And it’s not like you can’t get industrial bread over here, it’s just that they’re not taking shortcuts when it comes to time.
There’s regions which add sugar beet syrup, recipes with extra malt (often with active enzymes), or good ole pumpernickel which develops its sweetness through low and slow baking (24 hours in the oven), but adding plain sugar? That’s just ignoble.
It’s still “proper bread”, sparky. You clearly know nothing about baking.
I didn’t make any such claims. Though arguably what you consider junk food and what I consider junk food may be completely different. I have no interest in digging down into that.
Yes, flour has some trace simple sugar in it. I only said I don’t add sugar to mine. Yeast will happily break down starches into simple sugars, and the end result will have some sugar. The exact percentage will depend on fermentation time.
The Irish case had bread reaching 10% by weight flour of sugar. They certainly added it.
The bread being considered cake thing isn’t what you think it is. It was a matter of taxation, not nutrition.
But American bread is crazy sweet and very unbreadlike compared to European bread, I split my time between both and first thing I do when I get out of the US us have some proper bread.
US made food items, never safe to even bring into a kitchen. Look at the general US obesity, to get scared
Indeed. Common main ingredient: HFCS.
Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken
Annnnd there you have it.
Why do they want us to eat their chlorinated chicken so badly? Sounds like an evil agenda coming along…
We have our own farmers anyway.
Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.
So called “nationalist”, support local farmers.
I wasn’t born in the US but find myself living here. The food is awful. Cutting corners and padding some pockets, but listeria outbreaks on our food has become a weekly commonplace. Hundreds of recalls a month. The food is so treated its inedible. I cut almost everything out and buy from imported stores as much as possible. Even European brands often have an American version that is full of junk, so I have to read labels so carefully. I wish it wasn’t this way. No one here wants this.
Yeah, there’s a phenomenon where stereotypically fat Americans move abroad, and suddenly start losing a ton of weight. Not because their eating habits consciously changed, but simply because the food that was readily available was suddenly so much healthier than when they were in America. Almost as if infrastructure has a huge impact on the public’s health.
Portions in the US tend to just be larger as well. So you’re eating larger portions of bad food.
No one here wants this.
I agree with your post otherwise, but clearly the food industry wants things to be the way they are. So, some people want this, and they bought the politicians to make it so.
So called “nationalist”, support local farmers.
Nothing more British than shutting down a local business to reap profit from outsourcing. Just ask Thatcher.
😂
“Free market”
“Buy our chicken or you will lose your market here”
Shut the fuck up Donny, you’re out of your element.
A literal “Eat sh@€ or die!”.
Shateuro?
Or, here’s a crazy idea, the US could start meeting the basic safety and animal welfare standards that the entirety of Europe long ago decided was the basic minimum required for something to be suitable for human consumption.
Then how could they poison everyone as cheaply as possible?
Wait…does that mean Americans are currently consuming chicken thats been washed in chlorine?! How the FUCK is that up to scientific and health standards??
Honestly, given all the cramped factory farms and wide spread disease in poultry factories, it’s probably good we chlorine them up. Not to say I’d expect another country with better production methods to want to buy our shitty meat though
The chlorine only sanitises the outside and any needle that passes through it.
It’s up to the American standards, for what that’s worth. The chlorine washing makes the meat safe, because the process results in unsafe meat, causing danger to workers (and [speculation]possibly undue suffering for the birds). The EU processes result in meat that doesn’t need to be chlorine washed because the process ensures it is safe.
So the problem with chlorine washing is not in the end product but in the process that creates it. It’s the EU concern for worker safety that makes chlorine washed chicken problematic.
I’m not defending the USA here and I oppose imports of chlorinated chicken. Just want to ensure the ire is projected in the appropriate direction. If God forbid that idiot Farage gets some power and we end up with chlorinated chicken then it should be clearly labelled as such so that the British consumer can make an informed FUCK OFF.
The UK can’t allow the import of chlorinated chicken because then that would shut down our chicken trading, at least, and probably a lot more, with the EU, which is a bigger market than the American one, by about 30%. Fart’s team obviously knows this.
It’s up to the American standards, for what that’s worth.
Honestly, not much.
Most of our tap water has a touch of chlorine to kill off microorganisms. No need to jerk that knee.
The difference is that the chlorine disperses throughout the water and genuinely kills the bacteria, whereas the chlorine wash for chicken only sanitises the surface of the diseased chicken’s skin and any needle pushed through it. It does nothing to the meat and merely hides bacteria from detection.
America doesn’t have animal welfare rules anything like like the UK and EU have, and their chickens are usually kept in cramped conditions and bathe in their own filth all day long. It’s not very uncommon for their bellies to be actually rotting.
Chlorine washes the evidence away.
Criticism of the process is fair, but also an emotional knee jerk reaction over the use of chlorine is still unwarranted.
It’s not the chlorine, for goodness sake, it’s the disease it hides. Are you not listening? Chlorine wash after death is the only sanitary thing that ever happened to these poor mistreated disease-ridden lame birds. We don’t accept chlorine washed chicken because there’s no easy way to test whether it’s diseased meat or healthy meat.
Haven’t you heard? It rinses away all the covid from the internal organs. If it works for people it’s definitely good enough for chickens.
It’s not as much of a thing in the US today, but even the European Commission has found that it’s not a problem unless you’re eating 5% of your bodyweight in chlorinated chicken every day. It’s mostly protectionism for European poultry farmers under the guise of safety.
Sources: European Commission. (2003, April). The evaluation of antimicrobial treatments for poultry carcasses.
European Commission. (2008, April). Environmental impact and effect on antimicrobial resistance of four substances used for the removal of microbial surface contamination of poultry carcasses
European Food Safety Authority. (2015). Risks for public health related to the presence of chlorate in food.
The problem with chlorine washed chicken is NOT the chlorine, it’s the diseased underside of battery chickens who spend all day wading in their own filth and with endemic salmonella which passes tests for disease and bacteria because the chlorine sanitises the outermost layer and any needle that passes through it without killing the source of the problem at all. Americans get food poisoning FAR more often than Europeans, and the disgusting conditions the animals are kept in is a big part of the problem.
Yeah, that’s what many Americans don’t understand - chickens in the UK (and EU for that matter) live much much better lives (mostly free range, unless it’s an avian flu pandemic time). And the chlorine ban ensures that.
Do you drink tap water?
It’s not the chlorine that’s the problem, it’s the disease it masks from testing.
Tap water isn’t chlorinated in most of Europe as well
Google says otherwise
I do, the Netherlands and several other EU countries don’t use bleach
First thing I did after moving to the US for a few months was buying a water filter.
Yuk, who in the right mind would eat that crap
Most Americans, it’s the same stuff fast food places use for fried chicken. KFC, Chick-fil-A, Popeyes are very popular here in the US!
It’s sold in grocery stores here too. Has the odor of an indoor swimming pool. We can sometimes fine “air chilled” chicken which is usually not chlorinated but is always more expensive.
How does the chicken cross the Atlantic?
We’re back to the chicken tax… it’s the reason why 'Muricans all drive big pickup trucks:
Frozen in vacuum sealed bags, to get to the other side.
“I’ll drop the tariffs for EU if they accept American beer” -Trump, next week
(I don’t have much against American beer. But you have to understand that this joke absolutely had to be made. There was no other possible outcome.)
For now it’s a “joke”, next week it’ll be recorded history
