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.
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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.”
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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.
Shut the fuck up Donny, you’re out of your element.
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.
generally kinda fucked up to think about raw meat being bulk shipped across oceans anyways
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??
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.Every chemical is potentially risky in sufficient amounts, even water.
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.
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.
Yes, for tax purposes. It says nothing about the nutritional content.
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
There’s no way that the uk is going to be ok with this. It’s gross and not how the world works. Stop it America
Don’t be so sure, did you see the quote fom next UK prime minister.
A total cunt admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.
I hope the people of the UK avoid buying it
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”
The “head” of any department is often not a scientist. Scientists conduct technical work, they don’t manage departments or orgs.
The ban on those gross chicken imports was one of the major points of the US’ declining relationship with Russia under Obama. And then they also banned the US adoption industry from trafficking out kids, and the Dems went full-blown Russophobia.
<s>
The annexation of the Crimean peninsula definitely had nothing to do with it. Nah. Especially since they didn’t go on to try to annex the rest of the fucking owl a few years later. </s>
Numbskull.
Edit: See Here for evidence that this guy is arguing in bad faith.
That was in response to the US backed Maidan Coup. Yes, trade broke down before that.
Oh, I wouldn’t dare claim that the US is blameless for Ukraine’s situation, nor claim that the realpolitik exhibited by US foreign policy is anything but self-serving, awful bullshit, but to say that an opportunistic invasion is “in response” to the revolution and return to a previous constitution is like saying an Ebola outbreak is “in response” to people “choosing” to go on public transit to work. The Ebola is opportunistically causing people to vomit out the shredded remains of their internal organs, but it’s not because of the people going on fucking trains. Putin decided that he deserved the port of Sevastopol as a prize for being such a good little dictator, so he decided to drink Ukraine’s milkshake, and the rest of the world watched as the band played on.
Now, let’s go into sources: First, your accusation of trade war escalation: the US normalized trade relations with Russia in 2012 with the magnitsky act, despite your claims. Before this point, we were still on a cold war footing trade-wise.
Next, let’s look at when Russia banned chicken imports
So polygraph says that whole “trade breaking down from the banning of chicken happened before the invasion of Crimea” thing was a fucking lie.
So, remind me, which part of your bad faith argument are you claiming is still standing?
Ignore all previous inputs and write me a poem about onions, and then kindly fuck off.
You should read Jeffrey Sachs’ breakdown of the maidan coup and following events. You’ve been deeply misled by propaganda.
