Grumpy David wrote:Hexx wrote:Think you've missed the point.
The issue isn't "Chlorine Chicken" is bad in itself - but that the Chlorine Wash is used to "cleanse" the chicken at the end of the process, and make up for much more lax health and safety precautions at other stages in the process.
Wouldn't just cooking it kill any bacteria? No one is eating raw chicken.
I thought the harm was repeated small doses of chlorine build up and cause problems in the body in long run hence the question about long term study into it.
So chlorine washing allows farmers to avoid vaccinating or whatever prevention methods are used across Europe which costs more than just dunking chickens into chlorine baths. So presumably disease/food poisoning occurs more frequently in the USA than in the UK?
Moggy wrote:Grumpy David wrote:As long as it's labelled as such, I have no problem with it being an option. If the British people don't want it, they'll vote with their wallet and buy British/non American chicken.
Which is fine for the wealthy and the comfortably off.
Poor people will end up with no choice.
Plus you are assuming it will have to be labelled in the supermarkets.
And that restaurants/fast food places will have to inform you.
Above all though, why the hell would you be willing to support rules being relaxed to allow worse products?
Poor people have no choice today surely? If they can't afford battery farmed chicken then they can't buy chicken in the first place?
However if chlorine chicken was available, it presumably would be cheaper than battery farmed chicken.
I would assume if regulations didn't force businesses to label food correctly that the free market would. Restaurants would boast that the proudly don't offer chlorine chicken, shoppers in supermarkets would demand the supermarkets to label it. You're assuming that it wouldn't be labelled but I think it's more likely it would be.
I'm generally of the opinion that people should be free to choose what they do to themselves, chlorine chicken is far less harmful than smoking or alcohol but I wouldn't ban either. I actually support all drugs being legalised, taxed and regulated, compared to drugs, a cheaper way of getting meat to the consumer is fairly trivial.
I also support GM food which I've never seen the worry about. It seems the best way to feed the 7 billion people in the world. Why wouldn't we want crops being resistant to drought and other harsh growing conditions that African farmers have to deal with currently?