Chlorinated Chicken

[ferret]

I know this is a bit late but you know how it is!! here's a new one, along with hormone implanted beef the yanks now want to dump chlorinated chicken on us,
here's a link http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/chlorine-chicken-hormone-beef-european-fears-over-american-frankenfood-imports-9906889.html

It's quite mild compared to some reports I've read, also if you go on to http://action.sumofus.org/a/ttip-consumer-rights/?sub=tw
you can sign a petition against the TTIP trade deal.

[Moleman76]

And at the same time, we can't import haggis over here.  There is no justice.

[rafletcher]

I think that a chlorinated rinse is their method for reduction of campolybactor, which seems to be the new salmonella. You know, something that's easily destroyed by cooking and of which the spread is readily controlled by safe food handling. In the UK one method employed is a -90C Nitrogen "shower" before packaging - enough to destroy surface bacteria but not actually freeze the flesh (which is a no-no for "fresh" chicken).

Actually, the increasingly common practice in the UK of washing ones fresh chicken under the tap at home before cooking is of course a chlorinated rinse - at around 3ppm concentration. Unfortunately it does more harm than good, spreading the bacteria locally in the splashes from the washing.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm rather surprised we don't have chlorinated food here too. But I think the article is right to say the difference is not food safety but attitude to food - what is it for? In that respect, you might say we're already there.

[mcshroom]

The differing approaches to food I thought were well described in this article about eggs I read a few weeks back: -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/english-eggs-vs-american-eggs_n_5403941.html

(I would quote but my work web browser is crap, and the Huff Post site (like many others, including the Indy article above) seems to be causing IE to crash and swallow more and more computer RAM )

[ferret]

I bought a chicken from some supermarket or other and it actually had a "do not wash" sticker on it, as for chemicals in your water supply, we don't have any being on a bore hole, the draw back to this is that tea taste pretty rank every where else, but back to the chicken, as ratfletcher says all it takes is to cook it properly in the first place not rocket science really.
 

[hellymedic]

I am too lazy and crippled to do anything other than remove chicken from wrapper, put into dish, place in oven (cold natch) turn oven on and leave until cooked, when Man can remove chicken and serve it.

[Littlesox]

I am too lazy and crippled to do anything other than remove chicken from wrapper, put into dish, place in oven (cold natch) turn oven on and leave until cooked, when Man can remove chicken and serve it.

Don't worry Hellymeds - that's all it needs. No need for any other faffing about.

[hellymedic]

I am too lazy and crippled to do anything other than remove chicken from wrapper, put into dish, place in oven (cold natch) turn oven on and leave until cooked, when Man can remove chicken and serve it.

Don't worry Hellymeds - that's all it needs. No need for any other faffing about.

Indeed.
Man would complain if chicken failed to please, as is his wont with multiple other issues.

(He fretted and worried last week as I had served him strawberries from Morocco, where he'd had a tummy bug in his ancient past. Berries were delicious and he did not ail.)

He doesn't moan, so it must be OK.

[Tim Hall]

Never mind Chlorinated Chicken, what we need is Bicarbonate of Chicken.

[T42]

The antibiotics/growth-hormone thing was fought out bitterly here over 30 years ago, and at the end of it thousands of animals became unsaleable overnight.  Now, basically because of the US agribusiness lobby, what was gained then at great cost - food that didn't undermine the effectiveness of antibiotics or cause strange diseases in consumers - is to be thrown away in the interests of inequality. Bugger that.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

I bought a chicken from some supermarket or other and it actually had a "do not wash" sticker on it, as for chemicals in your water supply, we don't have any being on a bore hole, the draw back to this is that tea taste pretty rank every where else, but back to the chicken, as ratfletcher says all it takes is to cook it properly in the first place not rocket science really.

No chemicals in your water? 

[rr]

No chemicals in your water? 

Not even hydroxic acid?

[Fab Foodie]

I bought a chicken from some supermarket or other and it actually had a "do not wash" sticker on it, as for chemicals in your water supply, we don't have any being on a bore hole, the draw back to this is that tea taste pretty rank every where else, but back to the chicken, as ratfletcher says all it takes is to cook it properly in the first place not rocket science really.

The 'Do not wash' advice is not about getting the chicken any cleaner (it won't) but about not doing anything to the chicken that will spread contamination around the kitchen, in particular around the sink/draining board area.
It's been a long running debate with my MIL who insisted on washing chicken and chicken parts to move bacteria etc.  Regardless of my 25years experience in the food/meat processing industry, she never believed me that it was a fruitless and possibly harmful waster of time until somebody said it on R4 when it became truth all of a sudden .... 

[jsabine]

I'd always been in the habit of washing (albeit gently) whole chicken, not because I wanted to get the outside any cleaner but simply to sluice away any blood or loose bits that had collected in the cavity. I'd never heard the 'do not wash' advice until it started appearing on packaging a little while ago, and I don't think I'd heard any reasoning for it until this thread.

[rafletcher]

I'd always been in the habit of washing (albeit gently) whole chicken, not because I wanted to get the outside any cleaner but simply to sluice away any blood or loose bits that had collected in the cavity.

Why? All adds to the gravy. 

[Sergeant Pluck]

Never mind Chlorinated Chicken, what we need is Bicarbonate of Chicken.

Excellent

[Pickled Onion]

There was  a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.

It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?

[jsabine]

I'd always been in the habit of washing (albeit gently) whole chicken, not because I wanted to get the outside any cleaner but simply to sluice away any blood or loose bits that had collected in the cavity.

Why? All adds to the gravy. 

I'm the sort of wuss that buys poultry with the giblets because he's read something somewhere that you can use them in the gravy, or in stock, or in soup - in something anyway - then realises he doesn't know what to do with them, so leaves them all nicely wrapped up in the fridge until they drag themselves off to the bin without further intervention.

[Fab Foodie]

There was  a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.

It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?

Washing food in tap-water is pretty ineffectual.
Chlorine is very unstable in the presence of organic matter so there will be bugger-all left anyhow unless the dosage is reaaaally big.
Bacteria are not sat on their sun-loungers waiting to be washed-off by a wave of water, they're well dug in ....

[Cudzoziemiec]

There was  a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.

It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?

Salad was this week's killer way back in the 1980s and probably much earlier. Usually because it was washed, in dirty Spanish water in dirty Spanish restaurants. It was amazing how all those Spaniards survived all that untreated water.

[David Martin]

There was  a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.

It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?

The fun and games is that bacterial contamination of salad isn't trivial - you can't wash it off as it actively invades the leaves.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Washing off the mud is usually a good idea though, at least for the taste.

[ferret]

actually the point I was making in the OP was that if the yanks get their way, their big massive multi million dollar food companies who don't give a fuck about food safety will be able to dictate to europe and therefore the uk what food they can supply to us, we stopped growth implants years ago yet the yanks continue and pretty soon that will be on our plates, now it's how chicken carcasses are treated what's next? now some of you on here may think it's a big joke but personally I'd rather know or at least have a rough idea what's in my food rather than rely on some large corporate business who only cares about profit, check out the feed lots in the usa that's how they raise their beef, feed full of anti biotics, as a country we should be self sufficient in food and not relying on other countries to be supplying up to 40% of our food, yes it's nice to have fancy fruit flown from the other side of the planet or strawberries at christmas etc but it's about time we took food supply a bit more seriously,       

[ian]

Well, they do care about food safety, because they don't like being sued. Nor are all these companies American.

Growth hormone and antibiotic dosing aren't good ideas (I doubt GH beef will ever be palatable to European consumers, it's getting less so for Americans). We already use far too much veterinary antibiotics (often as feed additives) and it's poorly tracked.

To be honest, it's not practicable to grow all our food or buy direct from the farm, so there reasonably has to be industrialisation of food processes.