U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal
latimes.com> Perdue on Monday defended [...] the technique to disinfect poultry [...], arguing that U.S. farmers now use a chemical called peracetic acid rather than chlorine: "Peracetic acid ... is a great pathogen reduction treatment. You know what it is? It's vinegar, essentially. To say that's unsafe or not to be used, we don't think there's a basis for that in sound science."
I always thought the EU doesn't want this procedure because it effectively allows farmers to take a short cut and cover up bad practices used earlier in the chain. Under this premise, this quote just argues against a straw man for an otherwise meaningless counterargument.
>It's vinegar, essentially.
Lol. Sure, lets all just drink hydrogen peroxide. It's water, essentially.
Peroxides and carboxylic acids(vinegar is an example) are very different things...
Yes, the claim is untrue on its face: peracids and acids are chemically different and have different properties. PR flaks shouldn't be lying to the public, and I don't want to minimize that.
On the other hand, peracetic acid is something I would accept as a chemical treatment without qualms, while chlorine compounds would squick me out. It actually will break down into vinegar when it oxidizes something, and on the surface of raw meat, this process will be completed by the time a consumer gets it.
>Sure, lets all just drink hydrogen peroxide.
I use hydrogen peroxide to disinfect contact lenses. It neutralizes into water and oxygen in the presence of a catalyst. It would do that over a long enough period when exposed to air. I linked a paper in the thread elsewhere that shows the same decay for the chicken washes.
Using peroxide as a lens disinfectant has advantages over other multi-purpose solutions which cause increased corneal staining and are at much higher risk of allergic reactions.
This is about something else. If you are allowed to clean meat that aggressively it usually means what passes as good enough to be sold has a lower standard. Or the other way around: because we in the EU can't use these methods the whole supply chain and quality control has to be much much stricter to deal with this. We can't just dip the thing in chlorine and assume it is clean now.
1. Chlorine isn't used anymore, it's dishonest to claim that it is just as it's dishonest to claim peracetic acid is dangerous or ends up in the end product.
2. Well aware of the problems and concerns with the supply chain in the US, but not treating and dealing with salmonella outbreaks would have measurably worse health outcomes. These problems don't get fixed overnight. I'm fine with those problems being attacked but don't spread FUD about what you don't understand.
1. No, chlorine is still widely used on processed poultry in the U.S. The latest data from the National Chicken Council suggests that it's used in around 10% of chicken processing facilities. This is not a small amount of chicken.
2. There is no evidence that the absence of antimicrobial treatment of chicken carcasses yields "measurably worse health outcomes", as you say. Data collected by USDA and the UK's Food Standards Agency use different criteria for their respective streams, and thus can't offer definitive conclusions, but there don't appear to be large differences in contamination between the American and British systems.
@atoav's comment accurately conveys the official position of EU and UK trade and food safety agencies. I see nothing here to indicate that you have any better understanding of the topic than @atoav.
>1. No, chlorine is still widely used on processed poultry in the U.S. The latest data from the National Chicken Council suggests that it's used in around 10% of chicken processing facilities. This is not a small amount of chicken.
Seems it is still used, I was under the prior understanding that farms were phasing it out as it's far more corrosive and incurs a larger maintenance cost. I can't find anything more on the topic other than that industry page claiming about 10% from 2015.
> 2. There is no evidence that the absence of antimicrobial treatment of chicken carcasses yields "measurably worse health outcomes", as you say.
I have been consistent in claiming that the US supply chain has issues EU/UK don't appear to have. Increased salmonella concentrations are absolutely a health risk and these treatments show large measurable reductions on the level of surface salmonella. There's more than a few studies published in recent years covering outcomes on on chlorine, lactic acid, peracetic acid, SBS, and other rinses. I've never claimed that it's a magic bullet, only that all the data says 'it helps'.
Obviously outbreaks are dealt with here, too.
Tell me more about contacts and corneal staining. This comment is the first I've heard about it.
So the thing you need to know is there's 2 categories of soft contacts that are currently on the market. Hydrogels and Silicone Hydrogels (SiHy). The latter are newer and have become much more common as they are in theory healthier for the eye (they allow more oxygen to pass through). There's some drawbacks though in that the material isn't inherently wettable because silicone is hydrophobic by nature. This means it's a bit more complex to formulate a material and there's some quirks to it, notably it's usually stiffer. This might affect how solutions interact with the surface.
Corneal staining is basically scratching of the outer part of your eye. It is usually asymptomatic but can result in a burning sensation. It was found that the surface of SiHy is affected by what material is used to clean them. This link includes some research and plenty of linked studies: https://contactlensupdate.com/2013/08/14/what-do-we-know-abo... I had a better link that compared various products on the market but I'm unable to find it as this time.
Interesting. That link seems to say they aren't even really confident what staining is, it could just be the fluorescin dye binding to the eye. My friend wears Night & Day (SiHy) and rarely takes them out at night, replaces them maybe every 1-2 months. Mostly no issues or burning, although he did get a corneal ulcer one time, and he has seen increased neovascularization.
Correct, by no means am I claiming it's dangerous to use standard MPS, but I understand the mechanism of action with hydrogen peroxide better and it seems extremely effective. I wear Cooper Biofinity's and rarely take them out, aside from a minor abrasion that caused me not to be able to wear contacts for a month a couple years ago, they've been drama-free.
However, peroxide solution does have some big drawbacks. The better two-stage systems where you add a neutralizing solution to the peroxide when you're about to put the lenses back in I haven't been able to find in the US, and this is the safest gold standard (as you're leaving max disinfection power until right before you get them in your eyes). All that's sold are 1-step systems with a catalyst disk/ring at the bottom of a special case.
While I haven't had issues with the catalyst wearing off of the Clear Care cases, some of the other brands seem to not work as well and if the lens case is left in a sub-60F room, it will not neutralize in time. Honestly, this wasn't something on their documentation and if I wanted to be a pain about it I could probably put a consumer safety claim in. Putting un-neutralized peroxide solution in your eyes is a pretty traumatizing experience, worse than hot sauce. I don't recommend it!
EDIT: I'm not an optometrist/opthamologist, but I'll tell you how I got the background on this stuff: I did a project with some dude on IRC that was like the human bat, he had severe photophobia. We studied quite a bit about the characteristics of various contact lens technologies in preparation for our project. He wanted to acquire tinted contacts and vary the % of opacity. (I'm aware J&J is selling transitions contacts now and unsure of their efficacy but at the time the only options were extremely expensive traditional hydrogels.)
Long story short: We downloaded a bunch of patents and he built a small lab and dyed his own hydrogels using their patented processes. It was a neat and very illegal project, but he got his own sun contacts so he didn't have to live in his cave anymore and I got a ton of semi-useless knowledge.
Noone is suggesting ingesting vinegar, or peroxide, or chlorine, or paracetic acid.
But they do all breakdown fairly safely (peroxide becomes water iirc) and don't warrant the hysteria they're being given.
==It's vinegar, essentially. To say that's unsafe or not to be used, we don't think there's a basis for that in sound science.==
Why aren't they just using vinegar if it's the same thing?
I think they are not the same thing, not exactly, and the difference is interesting.
Hydrogen peroxide is a rather - comparatively - unstable substance, it decomposes to water and oxygen; hydrogen peroxide is a rather strong oxidizer, which defines a lot of its properties.
I'd assume double -O- bond in peracetic acid behaves the same - decomposes with release of O and acetic acid (or the anion of the acid). This oxidizing effect likely provides the effect which is desired - the same which chlorine would produce, that is, oxidizing a lot of things in chickens making them safer.
I've heard that hydrogen peroxide is used in Europe instead of chlorine in US for water treatment - for example, in swimming pools. I'm not sure why peracetic acid is chosen.
Not instead, along with chlorine, atleast in swimming pools and general water treatment.
Hydrogen Peroxide under UV light can burn a lot of toxins that the chlorine cannot catch, so to speak.
Because it isn't the same thing, but they want to convey the idea (accurately or not) that it is benign to a general audience.Why aren't they just using vinegar if it's the same thing?They are not chemically the same thing. Presumably they don't use vinegar because vinegar is less effective. However, the implication is that the chemical they use will break down to vinegar by the time it gets to the consumer.
I don't want meat washed in vinegar, bleh. Maybe co-incidentally, that's how some supermarkets used to prolong the shelf life of meat once it started becomming smelly and sticky. Just washed it like that in vinegar, and re-packaged it. Like 20 years ago. Thanks but no thanks.
...meat... in vinegar, bleh...
Do you really not like chicken adobo? You are the first [non-vegetarian] person I've ever encountered for whom this is the case.
Never tried. I like chicken that can taste good baked with just a bit of salt on top.
Usually it's a checiken not produced like this: https://youtu.be/RV-rO2-Rwz4?t=63 that taste like nothing without seasoning or marinade.
I might try that with meat that has started to go bad in my fridge. Seems like a good way to avoid waste.
Not sure if sarcasm or not, but please don't try that. You can use vinegar or other acidic marinades to prolong its edibility, but only before it has started to rot.
Cooking it would still sterilize whatever was rotting it, wouldn't it?
Yeah, but that does not necessarily make it edible again. Rotting is basically just all the little critters (bacteria, funghi) around us digesting it, which gradually turns the object in question into their output. That output can be toxic for us humans, and doesn't necessarily break down into digestable substances during cooking. I'm not very knowledgable on the topic and processes, so ymmv, but I wouldn't try it, food poisoning isn't very pleasant.
"sound science"
That's warning sign right there. It has a certain interpretation which is different from "good science". Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_science#Use_as_corporate_...
> Theories more favorable to corporate activities are portrayed in words as "sound science." Past examples where "sound science" was used include the research into the toxicity of Alar, which was heavily criticized by antiregulatory advocates, and Herbert Needleman's research into low dose lead poisoning. ...
> According to epidemiologist David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health in the Clinton Administration, the tobacco industry invented the "sound science" movement in the 1980s as part of their campaign against the regulation of second-hand smoke
> peracetic acid ... It's vinegar, essentially.
But no, it isn’t essentially: vinegar contains acetic acid:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetic_acid
which is a "carboxylic acid" with the following GHS statements:
“GHS hazard statements H226, H314
GHS precautionary statements P280, P305+351+338, P310”
Vinegar doesn't contain peracetic acid:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracetic_acid
which is an "organic peroxide" with the following GHS statements:
“GHS hazard statements H226, H242, H302, H312, H314, H332, H400
GHS precautionary statements P210, P220, P233, P234, P240, P241, P242, P243, P260, P261, P264, P270, P271, P273, P280, P301+312, P301+330+331, P302+352, P303+361+353, P304+312, P304+340, P305+351+338, P310, P312, P321”
The food process relies on the fact that peracetic acid decomposes rather quickly. However, handling the active solution requires great care. It's highly corrosive and toxic.
I would mostly be concerned about the sub-products of peracids reacting with foods. I don't know if there is any studies on this subject.
I don't understand the logic. If the end result is unequivocally good, why do the steps along the way matter beyond the "eww" factor?
Poor (cheap) practices earlier in the process (aka life of the chicken) could cause lower quality meat, fewer nutrients, more likelihood for nasty stuff. Washing the germs away doesn't necessarily wash away the effect of that.
> If the end result is unequivocally good...
I think they'd argue "cleanliness" is not the only aspect of what "good" is. The chickens' diets and living conditions affect the quality of the chicken. To say nothing of the animal cruelty angle...
Then why focus on the chemical wash and not the actual problem people care about?
Because the wash hides the actual problems making it harder to detect.
If they are allowed to use the wash, then they lose an incentive to improve their upstream practices.
"The end doesn't always justify the means" the saying goes, therefore for the end to be "unequivocally good", the means has to be taken into consideration. This so called "eww" factor I think is a gross understatement of animal cruelty, other injustices and poor practices
because in Europe, livestock welfare matters more and more
Because the purpose of the steps is to hide faults and failures in the process leading up to the final product, and this means that any failure in this process is _likely_ to lead to a bad/unsafe/unhealthy product.
I remember when I visited a supermarket in the states and noticed something very weird: Not only chicken breast was super super cheap but the color was whiteish and didn't look right to me.
Since a young age I visited egg farms and I can tell you the conditions are far from ideal, they even turn on the lights at 3am to enhance egg production. We're talking about egg farms that are regulated by EU laws. About 12 years ago the EU regulated how many chickens were allowed in a single case (about 8 I believe).
Even with EU regulation it is well known that the amount of antibiotics is simple too much and dangerous, we've law holes like: It is regulated in France but you can cross the border and get it in Spain as they don't control who buys it.
If this gets approved, I demand it to be labeled.
>I remember when I visited a supermarket in the states and noticed something very weird: Not only chicken breast was super super cheap but the color was whiteish and didn't look right to me.
Could it be woody breast?
https://old.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/c9lbu3/psa_can_we_tal...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bigger-chickens-bring-a-tough-n...
The fat on American chickens is visibly whiter than those I've seen for sale from small local farms as well as the ones in Australia, which both tend to have a much deeper yellow to them.
I think that's a diet thing, though.
Woody breast tends to give a striated appearance to the meat.
Just checked the pictures of woody breast and the ones I saw were even whiter.
I can tell you that chicken breast in the UK, France and Portugal looks and tastes the same to me.
The Netherlands has a treaty (against the outcome of the referendum) with the Ukraine which allows for effectively undermining our animal welfare policies.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2016/05/ukraine-poultry-giant-...
If the EU allows this as well (or finds some weird amended way to do the same while proclaiming something else) what's next?
Who knows what's next. Cheaper Tesla vehicles, more US technology, less regulation around the EU, and so on. This whole "chemical-washed" paranoia is just propaganda from EU farmers, and EU protectionism. I for one welcome cheaper products, so at least people who barely afford food would at least have an option. Certainly if standards of living are so high around the EU no one would buy such products anyway, right?
But we don't want cheaper Tesla vehicles. We don't want mass surveillance tools that masquerade as US technology. We don't want poor people to eat chemical-soaked chicken. It may surprise you but not everyone gapes in awe at America as a model to follow around the globe.
We're discussing explicit direct, non-monetary, costs to these "cheaper products". There are no free lunches here.
Some stats.
EU - ~500 Million people. "In the EU, over 91,000 salmonellosis cases are reported each year." [1]
US. ~330 Million People. "CDC estimates Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the United States every year. Food is the source for most of these illnesses." [2]
1- https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella 2- https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/index.html
Those numbers are comparing different things: https://briefingsforbrexit.com/fact-checking-the-bbc-fact-ch...
> Unfortunately Morris is making the statistical rookie error of comparing two statistics measuring completely different things. For the US, he reports estimates of total illnesses whilst for the UK he uses recorded lab reports. The actual number of illnesses in any country are unknown as many will not be diagnosed or reported. We do know for sure that the number will be far higher than lab reports of known, reported cases.
> And in fact, the lab report data are available for both countries and could have made a valid comparison. The US reported 46,623 salmonella lab cases in 2016, a rate of 14.5 per 100,000 people and a similar rate for Campylobacter. The latest UK figures (reported on the Reality Check article) are 10,089 for Salmonella (around 17 per 100,000 people) and 63,946 for Campylobacter (over 100 per 100,000 people). It might justifiably be queried whether lab reports are collected on the same basis in the US and UK but on the basis of what we have, rates are actually higher in the UK than the US.
This is a great misuse of data and not relevant as presented.
Perhaps the US has a significantly higher per capita consumption of Salmonella infection vectors. Perhaps people in the US are less clean in ways that increase infections. Perhaps EU cases are under reported.
Most cases of salmonella I've read are down to salads and not been overlooked by health service: https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/bagged-salads-pose-sal...
Maybe USA eats more salads - but agreed, pushing out this data without a breakdown going X % was due to chicken and outlying the data without that context to induce a perception that all is due to such chicken is a bit off-key.
This is an estimate vs reported cases. Not exactly good numbers to compare.
If we look at hospitalizations or deaths the difference is still significant.
> Outbreaks due to Salmonella are on the rise, with S. Enteritidis causing one in six food-borne disease outbreaks in 2016. Salmonella bacteria were the most common cause of food-borne outbreaks (22.3%), an increase of 11.5% compared to 2015. They caused the highest burden in terms of numbers of hospitalisations (1,766; 45.6% of all hospitalised cases) and of deaths (10; 50% of all deaths among outbreak cases).
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/salmonella-cases-n...
Genuinely interested in good numbers to compare then, any chance to elaborate?
Actual reported numbers from both ends. But this is a tricky case because our culture, healthcare and governments are different.
I'm definitely not an expert on the matter but comparing an estimate vs a reported value is silly.
I've heard that people in the US are discouraged from eating raw eggs. That makes it sound like the EU would be at greater risk, but if we the US doesn't do proper measurements we can pretend that it makes it impossible to even attempt to compare.
Eggs are a funny one, as the regulation is very different between US and EU.
In the US all commercial eggs must be washed, which destroys the cuticle and is why eggs are stored in a fridge to keep fresh. In the EU commercial eggs cannot be washed, and are typically stored outside the fridge (and vaccinated against salmonella, iirc).
There is a lot of contention about the effect on bacterial culturing, but research I've seen suggests it's a bit of a wash (e.g. 10.1371/journal.pone.0090987)
Turkey does best of all those, in regards to eggs: We have proper vaccination of chickens, eggs are not washed and eggs are always kept cold in stores (usually also at home).
Maybe, certainly prudent approach and many I know in the UK also store their eggs in the fridge, though can't say it's common to see them stored in a fridge in stores.
Be nice to see some stats comparing that, though different countries have different ways of measuring stats and then culture of accessing such services. UK, it's free so people wont hesitate, USA - not free, be cases that ppl ride it out themselves, or not and only then would be a statistic. Turkey - no idea and not easy to find such stats in western language as "Turkey health stats" won't end well in the likes of google and as it in effect, flips you the bird :groan:.
> Turkey health stats
Your keyword is TÜİK; the statistics institute of Turkey.
This is a genuinely hard problem between jurisdictions, because reporting tends to be done in terms of statistics only, with differing (and often unreported) data methods, etc.
Maybe, but it's not going to be wrong by several orders of magnitude like this.
Well, it is though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonellosis_in_the_United_St...
142,000 cases were reported annually several years ago. Not 1.3 million. So it is indeed an order of magnitude off.
Imagine comparing estimated flu infections vs people that go to the doctor for flu and you'd get similarly ridiculous results.
You are comparing apples and oranges.
The 142000 number is from chicken, alone. The 1.3 (or 1.2 at the top of the same wiki page you cite) is for all sources.
There is a epidemiological problem here, of a) reported vs. estmated and b) the basis of both those things. But it isn't the one you thought it was.
The context of this thread is chicken, but thanks for noting that. But the point stands -- estimated infections cannot be compared with reported cases.
If you can find actual reported cases in the US from all sources, that would be great to compare -- otherwise we shouldn't make the comparison at all.
Yes, we are pointing out the same epidemiological problem - I'm just noting your numbers don't support it compared that way.
The estimates of people infected by coronavirus in China are orders of magnitude larger than the reported cases. It’s very possible in epidemiology.
Coronavirus in China is a very early and fluid situation. The CDC is able to make estimates based on many years of data and research.
I'm not sure that that's the reason, actually. The reason is that not everyone who suffers from disease X necessarily goes to get treatment for disease X which would be the only way in which that case of disease X could be reported.
So, for example, if it's the case that only 1/100 people who get salmonella have symptoms severe enough to cause them to go for treatment, then the _estimates_ of salmonella will be 2 orders of magnitude _higher_ than the _reported_ cases.
I am not an expert and haven’t looked at those links. I’ve learned to be skeptical of US vs EU stats ever since I learned about the difference in definitions and data methods that lead to difference in infant mortality statistics.
For one thing, those two quotes are talking about different stats: “cases reported” vs “estimates”. How many cases are reported in the US? What is the EU’s estimate of the actual total?
Eastern Europe under-reports these cases for sure.
Why would they?
Chlorine treatment can make bacteria undetectable by inducing a dormant state [1] so some earlier studies on effectiveness of chemical treatments may not be valid.
Also the US and EU have different approaches to meat production. In the EU, the principle is to prevent meat contamination in the first place throughout the food production chain whereas in the US emphasis is placed on decontamination at the end of the chain.
Finally, some recent bacterial food poisoning outbreaks in Europe were due to vegetables so comparing numbers of infections without taking the source into consideration can be misleading.
They are proposing the use of peracetic acid instead of chlorine.
This may also induce a kind of dormant state in bacteria as many chemical stresses do. So whether a new chemical treatment is more effective needs to be tested in light of this knowledge. While peracetic acid has known disinfectant properties, it's only been used for washing hands as far as I know, not for ingestion. It's also a very strong irritant even at low concentration, plus it usually contains a mixture of acetic acid, hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid in various proportions. I am not sure how this would be controlled and there's been no study on ingestion of this combination of substances in humans.
This is not a new issue between the US and European nations.
I had to look it up, but Sonny Perdue (the secretary of ag) is not related to Perdue farms (large chicken manufacturer)
He is, however, the first cousin of Georgia's Senator David Perdue.
So, I fail to see the issue with the chemical currently used. Chlorine had obvious negative health issues, but peracetic acid and hydrogen peroxide both decay quickly when exposed to air: http://www.foodprotection.org/files/food-protection-trends/m...
I understand the concerns about using such processes over having a clean processing facility but I don't trust the cheap labor (prisoners, migrant farmers, etc) the US uses to not cause an outbreak. For those doubting this logic please look at the shit lettuce outbreaks we have every 2-3 months.
There's a decent amount of chicken farming and processing in my area (southern Mississippi). I know a few people who work for Southern Hens. The job isn't great, but the benefits are ok and the pay is fairly good for the area (probably doesn't compare well to other parts of the country, though). Better compensated than the majority of unskilled or even semi skilled labor in the area that I've seen. Certainly not cheap migrant or prisoner labor.
I understand it isn't the case everywhere, but slave labor in the US poultry industry is a thing: https://thinkprogress.org/the-hellish-conditions-facing-work...
Tyson is apparently not a great employer, but I'm not sure I would call that slave labor.
Apologies, I grabbed the wrong link. The one I meant to send is about a supplier for Tyson: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/thought-going-rehab-ended-...
The (socialist) European way then would be to regulate the industry, to ensure certain standards. Basically trying to attack at the root of the problem instead of the outcome. We are not necessarily very good at it, but we try and it does work reasonably well on average.
What exactly is socialist about this?
Sorry, forgot the /s on "socialist". Just being a bit snarky about anything government related easily painted as socialism in some subsets of the US population.
What's the health impact of the chemical-washed chickens?
My understanding is the chemical wash isn't the inherent issue here. It's the fact that they need to be chemically washed in the first place. Due to factory farming, chickens live in piles of their own poop, and with that comes tons of other unhealthy side effects. To combat that, in the US we simply give them a chemical bath.
The issue at hand is that the EU doesn't want low quality chicken entering the market because it could cause health issues if not cleaned properly, and at the volume we produce, it's likelier than not to be done improperly at some point, at scale. It's just not worth the risk.
But, I could be missing the mark entirely. This is all from memory when I read up on EU food standards a few years ago. My memory of all of these things could be completely off here.
Seems to me like the real motivation is defending their own agricultural industry. American chicken is cheaper and likely just as good. The health claims are weak, everyone can understand protectionism, but it is often masked behind other claimed goals.
The data on salmonella is not super solid, but points to higher levels in the U.S. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47440562
>>Seems to me like the real motivation is defending their own agricultural industry. American chicken is cheaper and likely just as good.
Well...if you stop and think about it for a second - of course it is. If our, European farmers have to abide by certain animal welfare standards and the American ones don't, then of course American meat will be cheaper. Equally, I wouldn't want to eat chicken meat from China or Vietnam - their animal standards are nowhere near ours, so why should they be sold here? If Americans improve their standards then they are welcome to our markets.
The US imported food has been the stuff of jokes in my country for almost 20 years now, even before we entered the EU, and we are an Eastern-European country with all sorts of other problems. Can’t really understand how can many US commenters say that US food is as good and healthy as European food with a straight face.
Many US residents are speaking from their own experience as consumers, and probably only experience the lowest quality chicken after it has been turned into highly processed foods like chicken nuggets or dogs, masking the quality issues.
The chicken that many US commenters see as intact wings and breasts are probably higher quality than the exports (unless they go specifically to a discount store specializing in low quality foods).
Isn't it obvious the stuff that gets imported isn't the same stuff that all Americans eat? The US isn't exactly exporting tons of fresh food all the way to Eastern Europe.
Of course its gonna be mostly packaged, mass produced crap....
Hence why we're against treating said "mostly packaged, mass produced crap" the same as local European food.
Except part of the reason you have mostly packaged, mass produced crap is because of your own regulations which specifically try to block the US market to protect your home markets.
That's besides the point though, you said US food isn't as healthy as EU food. You didn't say "imported, mass produced stuff isn't as healthy as fresh EU produce and meat". I was simply saying that you are getting a very skewed perception of US food if you are only comparing against imported US food.
US food in the US is generally high quality.
Having lived in Europe (UK, France) and North America (Canada) I can assure you that American chicken is not just as good. It's not just chicken. All sorts of meats are worse in quality.
>All sorts of meats are worse in quality.
Well not really, especially when it comes to Beef. Pork has has a rather diverse selection from both side, but generally I think they are about the same.
I should clarify. It's not impossible to get higher quality meat but it's harder. I can go into almost any supermarket in the UK or France and get very high quality meat easily. I find that in Canada and the US it's much harder to find good quality meat in a supermarket. I have to go to more specialized places. Similarly the lower end in Canada and the US tends to be much lower than the lower end in the UK and France.
Don't even get me started on trying to get unsmoked ham but that's a cultural thing.
Like many things in the US, there is a huge range. I think it's probably true that at the lower end of the cost spectrum in most meats, the US produces more cheaper and lower quality stuff. Particularly the average grocery store inexpensive chicken isn't good, but it's cheap and super plentiful.
That's a long way from "all sort of meats are worse in quality", though.
Having lived in the UK and the US, I actually can't tell the difference in any meaningful way. High quality poultry costs more and is better in both places. Both places have sketchy chicken shacks that probably don't use high quality meat, although I CAN assure you that Harold's in Chicago exceeds any chicken shack I've tried in the UK.
Considering that salmonella is far, far worse in the US than in the EU, your claim that American chicken is "likely just as good" is obviously false.
Salmonella in the US is [more often] due to greens [than] chicken.
Do you have any data on rates of salmonella from chicken, specifically, in both regions?
Edit:
"Chicken, beef and pork account for just 33% of salmonella poisonings in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture"
https://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/foods-more-lik...
Nope. See current top post, the US gets an order of magnitude more salmonella infections beacuse of bad food safety.
One objection is that it allows the initial chicken production to be dirtier as you can then just disinfect later even. In the EU, the entire processing needs to be clean.
Yes, from what I've seen this is the primary objection (aside from realpolitik considerations i.e. wanting to keep agricultural prices high).
Salad has routinely been chlorine-washed in Europe for years, and nobody complains about that.
I hope most people would agree chickens are a bit more sentient than salad.
They are about as sentient as the salad when this washing we are talking about occurs. (I really hope I understood it correctly that this happens after they have been killed)
The point isn't when the washing occurs, it's in what conditions they have to be kept in before that to either require or not require washing.
Isn't the real concern how safe the final product is though?
BUT....what if it isn't clean? One worker can infect a whole host of chickens and there is no mitigation that will stop it before it is consumed except for the hope that it is cooked properly. Besides, the "chemical washing" is not chlorine anymore it is just vinegar (What many people put on chicken to eat anyway). So ideally you would have clean farms, clean processing and clean storage and then the consumer would properly cook it...but if one of these does not happen ideally, another cheap way to prevent killing people is to use vinegar to reduce possible sickness even further. The only reason why I can think that this would be apposed is to protect poultry producers in Europe.
So why aren't the Americans showing us how clean their farms are, instead of going on about this vinegar strawman?
How is it a strawman? Chemical washing is a sensible thing to do.
You know I live in the mid-west and I have seen some iffy chicken farms and some really clean ones. I have also been to Europe (mainland, Britain, and Ireland) and have seen the same. The thing is you simply can not inspect everything all the time and guarantee the entire supply chain will be free from issues...but you can put mitigations in place that can help.
Acetic acid and peracetic acid are completely different things.
Peracetic acid has the following health warnings:
GHS Signal word Danger
GHS hazard statements H226, H242, H302, H312, H314, H332, H400
GHS precautionary statements P210, P220, P233, P234, P240, P241, P242, P243, P260, P261, P264, P270, P271, P273, P280, P301+312, P301+330+331, P302+352, P303+361+353, P304+312, P304+340, P305+351+338, P310, P312, P321
Because the media who shows people things gains far more from manufacturing crisis and various trade wars then telling the other side of the story.
An excellent question. If anyone can link to some authoritative information on this, I'd be interested in reading it, too.
All I got from a Google search is yoga mom blogs. I'd like to see what a .gov health agency has to say about it.
but .gov means US health agency... doubt they can be trusted on this issue.
More trustworthy than most other sources. I'll acknowledge the bias, but at least they have people who know something about the subject they are talking about and have done actually research. That is .gov normally tells the truth - not always the whole truth, but at least the truth. The "yoga mamas" scream chemical and pass on friend of a friend rumors as pure truth.
Yoga mamas... why do you even bother mentioning them?
However, it looks to me that an US organization talking about US produced food under the Trump administration is about as trustable as the FTC when talking about net neutrality or the FAA when talking about Boeing airplane safety.
"yoga mamas" comes from the grandparent post. Far too many people get their "facts" from their friends and repeat whatever they made up/heard without any critical thought.
This isn't just Trump, I see at least as many liberals do that. A large part of the Trump-hate I see is from made up facts that have no basis in reality. (which isn't to saw Trump is good or honest, just that his opponents are doing the same thing they accuse him of - they believe they have the real facts)
The term 'liberals' always amuses me, being outside the US.
Looks to me you use it as 'those hippie commie bastards' while around where I am it means 'the (optionally center) right'.
So the question becomes, what is the impact to consumers?
Does one process result in a less healthy product or not?
In other words what is the advantage of being sterile all they eat through versus ensuring sterility at the end of the process? Is one more prone to letting pathogens slip through?
Seems like the EU approved peracetic acid for use on some food products but just not chicken.
https://chemicalwatch.com/biocideshub/47111/eu-commission-ap...
To quote the article:
> It’s vinegar, essentially. To say that’s unsafe or not to be used, we don’t think there’s a basis for that in sound science.
If you're fine with using vinegar elsewhere in food, you should be fine with this.
EU member states put chlorine in their water supply, too, but chlorine itself was never the problem. Chlorine washing can be used to hide problems further up the supply chain, so if vinegar washing enables the same, it should also be disallowed.
Not all states do, atleast in my region, there is no requirement to clean water with chlorine once it comes from the water table other than if a farmer screws up their schedules.
I'm fine with vinegar in my salad dressing, but I'm not OK with the chef using it to clean his hands in the place of soap+water.
Sanitized poop is still poop. I'd rather the poop not be there at all, as much as possible.
You'd better not look any closer in to sanitization standards in the food industry then... plenty of sanitized (rat) poop.
There's a substantial difference between "a certain amount of contamination is basically unavoidable" and "we could raise chickens more humanely like the Europeans do but choose not to for more profits".
I personally don't get this. European supermarkets are full of cheap chicken meat. Can the US food industry actually beat that low quality meat with even cheaper and lower quality junk food and still be profitable? Please somebody call the ALF squat team. This is sick.
Quality issues and Transportation cost aside. US Poultry export prices is actually cheaper than in Europe.
Look, the "Chlorhühnchen" are back!
In Germany, this was the favorite scare topic of the press in articles about the TTIP negotiations.
So I doubt that they will be able to include that in any new treaty without causing a major freak-out here in Germany.
Related is the chicken tax [1] on light trucks which is one big reason why SUVs (which are classified as light trucks) are so popular in the US because US companies can make more profit selling them due to the import tariffs stifling the European competition.
Do they still have to label irradiated food in the EU? IIRC many people avoid it because radiation is scary sounding. I have to imagine that chemically treated meat would be an even tougher sell, regardless of how benign it might actually be.
I don't cook meat without chemically washing it either. I was raised on washing meats with vinegar and sour orange and don't compromise on it at all. Chemically washed is quite the spin considering US rates on food poisoning are probably quite low.
I really hope the EU will not allow this kind of US meat into the EU market...
If they do, I hope they make sure that it has to be labelled on the food.
They do that with a lot of things, and then it’s really easy not to buy it.
Food chains/restaurants won't have this labels in the menus. And they will serve you the cheaper product.
Depends on the restaurant, the last one I ate at produce their own stuff at a couple of local free range farms that they corporate with. Once in a while you can even go visit the farms at special cooking out events. Not really uncommon here either.
I mean, if you order a pizza from the cheapest place then sure, but they already sell some really dodgy meats. We’ve had quite a few scandals where the beef turned out to be horse. Illegal, but you kind of know the stuff they sell is close to poison.
That's the whole point of the trade deals though. It wouldn't be labelled properly, since it would be considered unfair competition.
But it would be labelled as chicken coming from the US, this makes it easy enough to avoid!?
Already today, I always read on the label to find out from what country the meat I'm about to buy comes, I always prefer local over imported as I think it is something little I can do to reduce unnecessary emissions and would hence anyway not buy meat that comes from another continent, just to get it few cents cheaper
It is however often not possible when eating meat at restaurant for example :(
Things that aren’t labelled properly are illegal in a lot of European countries an the EU doesn’t have power to overrule that. GMO products has pushed this hard over the years because almost no one wants to buy them.
Hell in Denmark where I live, half of our super market chains outright refuse to carry things like eggs from cage-hens. So they likely wouldn’t ever offer chemical washed chicken American for sale, and they’ll likely even use it in commercial to tell consumers how much better than their competitors they are.
Interesting that so much of the activity of "free market" advocates is centered around reducing access to information.
Unless you're eating in a restaurant.
If the EU doesn't the UK will
> If the EU doesn't the UK will
The noises from the UK are that it won't [0]. But in reality let's see.
We won't really know what happens until the ink has dried on the trade deal with the US and it has been published.
> The UK will not lower food standards to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, the government says.
Good thing they're leaving the EU then...
Indeed, and remember to add to that the additional £350 million a week to the NHS. It'll be better than living in Shangri-La
You realize how small the UK market actually is? (not just compared to europe)
Which is still better than their chicken--look at the frequency of the presence of campylobacter in raw chicken in the UK. It's absurd to think that they're doing anything better.
We’re vaccinating our chickens. That seems better - we get to eat raw eggs. We also seem to be doing animal welfare better [1]. It seems that the US has essentially no animal welfare regulation for poultry [2].
[1] https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/
[2] https://www.britishpoultry.org.uk/identity-cms/wp-content/up...
> In the USA, there are currently no federal regulations to control or safeguard the welfare of animals used in agriculture. An Animal Welfare Act is in place but it applies only to animals kept for non-farming purposes. State laws govern animal welfare in some parts of the country but currently no such legislation applies to poultry in any of the three major poultry-producing states considered here (Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas).
Why? Do you believe it is harmful? If so, why?
I allows horrendous poultry farming practices, which in the US are "fine" because the meat gets washed afterwards anyway, so who cares chickens are standing in their shit until their own feet dissolve - the end product is fine, right?
I'm not a vegetarian, but god I hope the American chicken never enters this market.
> Do you believe it is harmful? If so, why?
In Europe we believe it's indirectly harmful: Being able to wash germs off meat and eggs allows tolerating more diseases in the farms. If you can't just sanitize diseases off products, you have to keep the farms clean of diseases.
The same way living in your own feces but taking a shower before leaving the house does not make you a clean person.
It's just protectionism. It's not like the chicken tastes of bleach. Have you ever eaten food in the US?
The US has 450 deaths from Salmonella every year, the UK has had 1 in the last ten years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonellosis_in_the_United_St...
I'd be interested to see what the relative rates of campylobacter are. I could only find UK figures, which were 56,729 cases in 2017.
I don't think campylobacter kills, but it's certainly not very nice to get.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537033/ - "According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, there are about 1.3 million cases of Campylobacter infection each year in the United States alone." ("Update: December 29, 2019")
63 million population in the UK. 330 million in the US. Ratio = 1/5.2 .
57K cases in the UK, 1.3 million in the US. Ratio = 1/23 .
=> about 4x more likely in the US.
That's because of mandatory salmonella immunization in the UK, it's not because of sanitary practices.
That's an even stronger argument against allowing US chicken to be imported.
Could be, but I think it's mainly an argument against US eggs to be imported, not the meat, which is the discussion here. I've never heard of someone getting salmonella from chicken meat because it's not normally eaten raw.
Although personally I think the US should have mandatory salmonella immunization (currently about half of egg laying chickens are immunized).
> I've never heard of someone getting salmonella from chicken meat because it's not normally eaten raw.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/salmonella-raw-ch...
"Salmonella from raw chicken has made 92 people sick across 29 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday."
I stand corrected.
Maybe the trade agreement should be modified to require only immunized chickens to be exported to the UK.
Yet if you look at the cases they weren't transmitted from meat/egg end-products, it was almost always produce sources contaminated with manure from infected populations.
I'm not sure we can trust US resident's opinions on taste as long as Hershey's chocolate still exists.
>I'm not sure we can trust US resident's opinions on taste as long as Hershey's chocolate still exists.
As an American, I agree with you 100%. Our opinions on taste are utterly worthless.
It's not just Hershey's chocolate either (which is already bad enough), it's so many other foods that are commonplace here. Food quality in this country is abysmal. You can get great food here, but it's harder to find and you'll pay dearly for it, but the stuff that regular Americans eat is generally awful.
Hershey’s chocolate is fine, so is American cheese. (You’d be insane to make S’mores or a grilled cheese with anything else, and if you don’t like those things you’re unamerican and should just move to Europe.)
I once heard a Belgian say: "There are two kinds of foods: Those that go with chocolate and those that go with cheese"
Hershey's chocolate breaks that rule and contains butryic acid. Here's a link explaining why and how that affects the taste: https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/butyric-acid/1017662...
EDIT: To be fair I think the butryric acid thing can be overlooked as an acquired taste. Same way that IRN BRU tastes like bubblegum to Americans, even though UK'ers claim it isn't. I still think Hershey's regular milk chocolate works better with peanut butter than any other chocolate I've had. The bigger issues I have with Hershey are the cloying amounts of sugar they keep adding as they knock down the cocoa butter and cacao solids in each of their products to save money. I used to run boxes of UK KitKats down from Canada's duty free stores so that other Americans could see what they were missing out on.
Hershey's chocolate is pretty bad, and American cheese is barely cheese. But both have functional properties that make them desirable for some applications: it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance. That's also why people use it in grilled cheeses, although it's less essential there (swiss melts just fine on a sandwich, for instance), and you should at the very least probably add some shredded cheddar or something to your American in a grilled cheese.
You can add American's functional properties to almost any cheese with sodium citrate powder (we make and slice up baking sheets worth of "Americanized" aged cheddars, gruyere, and even blue).
I would not confuse these useful properties with goodness. Grapeseed oil is also extremely useful. But California olive oil is a better oil. American cheese is like the grapeseed of cheese.
>it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance
Huh? On non-fast-food cheeseburgers, cheddar is typically the standard cheese, and swiss is also popular. One of the best burgers I ever ate had caramelized goat cheese (in Europe). I don't even know the last time I had American cheese (on a burger or anything else), and I'm pretty sure the cheeses I've had on burgers were not "Americanized" as you mention, they were just normal cheese.
People like a lot of "burgers" that are barely burgers by the classic definition. Every once in awhile, I like a pub burger with all sorts of random stuff on it too. But those burgers are to "cheeseburgers" what Chicago pizza is to "pizza".
There is a reason that the nationally-famous burgers at Au Cheval in Chicago, Hog & Hominy in Memphis, Holeman & Fitch in Atlanta, Shake Shack in NYC, Husk in Charleston, and probably a bunch of other destination burgers all use American, despite many of these places being sit-down establishments.
>There is a reason that the nationally-famous burgers at Au Cheval in Chicago, Hog & Hominy in Memphis, Holeman & Fitch in Atlanta, Shake Shack in NYC, Husk in Charleston, and probably a bunch of other destination burgers all use American, despite many of these places being sit-down establishments.
And what is that reason? We have Shake Shack here in DC, and the reason there is pretty obvious: Shake Shack is fast food. It's a tier higher than Five Guys, and two or three tiers higher than McDonald's, but it's still fast-food, and their burgers do not cost $12-15 like in nice restaurants, so of course they're going to use cheap cheese. As for those other places, I've never heard of them.
Maybe I'm just weird, because I generally consider fast food to be inedible, so I really don't pay much attention to chains like that. Shake Shack is probably the cheapest type of restaurant I would ever eat at, and that's pretty rare. I make enough money to eat good food.
Shake Shack --- at least the original --- is an internationally recognized excellent burger. But leave it aside, if you want, as a chain. The other burgers are celebrity, destination burgers; "make arrangements well in advance to get them" burgers (though you can get Au Cheval's burger easily at Small Cheval now).
American cheese is the standard, at the high end and the low end, for burgers that aren't eaten with a knife and fork. The reason is that it has superior functional properties to other cheeses: it remains emulsified when melted, and easily melts completely.
At this point, I'd probably just send to you J. Kenji Lopez-Alt if you want to read more about the virtues of American cheese. It's useful stuff. Ironically, though, I'm here in the thread to talk it down as "cheese". It's a good product. It's not good cheese.
What makes Hershey’s chocolate bad? A Hershey’s bar with almonds is pretty much as good as it gets chocolate wise. Certainly better to my palate than the fancy high cacao chocolate that is trendy these days.
You like what you like. You can go read any number of blind taste tests, or any of a million Reddit threads where it is tediously re-explained that the sour milk note in the stabilizers Hershey's grosses Europeans out, or the NYT's notes about how bitter their cocoa is, but really it's just commodity chocolate whose overwhelming characteristic is sweetness with almost no texture or anything of interest to recommend it.
If you're looking for something to serve an almost functional role in a product, like a S'more or whatever, it's... fine? Do you bake with Hershey's? Like in a brownie, where you can dial the sweetness in instead of swinging it all the way to 11?
I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Hershey's chocolate, and I myself like American cheese! I'm just saying they're objectively not as good as other products, and the people who point that out aren't wrong to do so. Honestly, I think most people who say Hershey's is good would prefer Cadbury's.
You should try some German or Swiss chocolate. Ritter Sport (German) is very good and not costly (and not high-cacao either).
If you've only had good grilled cheeses with American cheese in them, I feel bad for you - truly. A good grilled cheese is one of life's greatest pleasures. There are many different kinds of cheeses that can go into a good grilled cheese.
Supposedly our pasteurization standards are absurdly high as well, so very likely we don't know what real cheese tastes like either
I'm actually British, and live in Kent. And I agree, Hersheys chocolate tastes like sick. And FWIW I keep chickens and geese for eggs.
On the face of it "chlorinated chicken" sounds unappealing, but I've been to America multiple times over the years, eaten all sorts of food (including chicken) and never noticed any difference or ill effects.
Like most people here, I get to choose what food I eat. I could eat organic, ethically sourced meat every day if I chose to. However, if chlorinated chicken let's people on a lower income eat better than before, I'm all for it.
Let me return the question, are you are basically saying "if I can't taste it, it can't be bad"? ;)
I'm saying I can't taste it and noticed no ill effects (which admittedly is an anecdote). However, of my friends that have gone to the US, I've never heard any of them say they would be avoiding chicken in case it was chlorinated. It only seems to be an issue for imports.
Who is still eating meat in 2020? Disgusting. No excuse whatsoever for supporting animal cruelty. Shame on you.
I buy all my meat from Butcher Box. All their meat is humanely raised. All their animals are pasture raised and free to roam. Pigs have bedding in open barns, chickens roost in barns and are free to roam. https://www.butcherbox.com/sourcing/ They work with American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) on their chicken standards as well.
Not all meat is cruel.
> Not all meat is cruel.
To be clear, I'd still consider killing me cruel even if you treated me nicely up until that point.
While that's basically my approach as well, there are people who genuinely believe that raising any animal for the purpose of eating them is cruelty.
You're kidding yourself if you think the meat you buy isn't the product of cruelty.
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, and between this and "People who believe in God are the assholes", you've been flaming up a bit of a storm here. You've also done it repeatedly in the past. It's not what this site is for.
Everyone outside your bubble.
Me. It tastes good.
Off topic: Does anyone know how they are blocking scrolling when scripts are disabled and overflow:hidden is taken off body? Infuriating
No idea, but on Firefox just click "reader view" and it gives you the text nicely formated.
> chemical-washed chicken
Isn't all chicken "chemical-washed chicken"? Surely, they wash it in water at some point?
I find it harder to pay attention to the actual complaint because they word it in such a biased manner to purposefully play on the fears of people who associate 'chemical' with danger. Imagine if someone was complaining about the European produced poultry because of all the chemicals they put in their food.
Dihydrogen monoxide can be a very dangerous solvent.
I wonder if the EU will ever say: "Hey, change your methods, we can make trade deal." Perhaps the lack of a charismatic, true leader makes it to risky and it is too easy to avoid public scrutiny. When stuff goes sour, people blame trump. Who will us EU citizens blame?
“ Am I saying that I'm a chicken wing expert? No. But I am telling you this, the wing is hands down the best part of the chicken.” [1]
1 - https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-snl-sketch-2004-chicke...
(Read to the end, it is not what you think it is!)
I have stopped eating meat in 1990, due to the discusting way the animals are treated and I couldn't care less. At well over 40s I still look young, no gray hair, medical results are fabolus.
BUT!!! I would seriously ask all the vegans/vegetarians to STFU, they are annoying to the point where everyone attacks me when I tell him that I don't eat meat and try to argue. It is embarasing that, as a vegetarian (lacto/ovo whatever, who cares), I rather don't tell this to anyone, due to radical groups too stupid to understand, that their aggressive actions are beeing counterproductive. There was an old saying that fighting for peace is like f* for virginity. It just doesn't work. And I am so sorry that I think that there is no need to make every meat eater on barricades due to agrasive stand you unneededly take.
Just let people eat whatever they want. They will figure out on their own.
You may be shocked to find that you are part of the group you are trying to to call out...
Why should people be able to eat whatever they want? If people's food choices directly support cruelty towards another creature then someone has to speak up to defend that creature. Most vegans are not militant activists, but they also shouldn't have to keep silent. People will figure out much sooner how much cruelty is involved in producing their Popeyes Chicken sandwich if vegans speak up.