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Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

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Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#61

Post by Xylakant »

zeteo wrote: post #51
Xylakant wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more costs attached to it: Using antimicrobial sprays or antibiotics in abundance tends to create resistant strains and the products enrich in the food chain. The same effect could be created by just using proper hygienic conditions in the slaughterhouse - but that would cost more and require some spoilt food to be trashed - such as the trimmings from beef. Instead it's treated with ammonia and sold as grou…

>The same effect could be created by just using proper hygienic conditions in the slaughterhouse That's a pretty strong assertion. How did you find out that equivalent hygienic conditions could be created in slaughterhouses at a moderate cost? Aren't antibiotic sprays just getting the germs that got through, despite reasonable precautions being taken?

The article asserts that the increased usage is to compensate for speeding up the kill lines - so less precaution.

Bacteria-related food poisonings due to spoiled meat are pretty rare in germany and since the practice is forbidden here I assume it must be perfectly viable, albeit properly more expensive to create proper conditions.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#62

Post by Joeri »

AlexMuir wrote: post #52

HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others. In Europe we can barely stop people from selling horsemeat as beef. I'm not sure how effectively we are implementing any of these rules, and I'm sure a farmer who wishes to do so can flout them at will. One positive thing to come from the rise of supermarkets…

In my view the horsemeat-as-beef scandal demonstrates that the system works and that mislabeled meat gets detected. In this case the meat was perfectly edible, it was just mislabeled.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#63

Post by shabble »

tokenadult wrote: post #10

The most sensible European regulations of those listed in the article kindly submitted here are "What Europe did: Banned all forms of animal protein, including chicken litter, in cow feed in 2001." and "What Europe did: In the EU, all antibiotics used in human medicines are banned on farms—and no antibiotics can be used on farms for 'non-medical purposes,' i.e., growth promotion." I'd like to see the United States fo…

> For the other regulatory practices mentioned in the article, especially washing chicken carcasses, I'd like to see more detailed evidence of the safety trade-offs involved in the practices of the United States and of Europe.

There was the relatively recent story in Forbes[1] (HN comments at [2]) about the difference in US/UK treatment of eggs, where the UK standard is to leave them unwashed to protect a natural anti-microbial coating, and the US policy is to wash and artificially disinfect them (at the cost of removing the original coating)

There are some similarities there, and I'm curious about whether the additional cleansing steps are necessary, or part of a process optimisation that allows for more variation in the cleanliness of incoming birds (ie: permitting a faster/messier slaughter or whatever)

The alternative, that it's something like the ammonia used to kill dangerous pathogens in 'recovered meat', is (IMO) more of a concern.

Purely speculation on my part though.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-ame...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#64

Post by jlarocco »

samatman wrote: post #41
Shivetya wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that many outbreaks of salmonella occur from greens sold loose and packages in super markets. Quite a few large scale farms use animal waste in one form or another to fertilize crops. I would prefer they settle the irradiated foods disputes and use that to clean up much that is done with chemicals. I have seem far less its unsafe than safe yet radiation is a boogeyman that is hard to beat.

Quite true, and indeed, partially-treated municipal sewage is used on crops in many places, which gives me pause. It happens to be the case that this article focuses on deficits in our meat supply, and wider reading suggests that animal food safety is in fact poorer on many spectra.

In the US, "certified" organic food can't use treated sewage as fertilizer.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#65

Post by mietek »

rmc wrote: post #47
jkldotio wrote: post #6

The flipside of this are things like the banana regulation, more commonly known as Commission Regulation (EC) No 2257/94.[1] I believe it's now rescinded under ridicule but there are people who try to deny it even existed. It's well worth reading in full on eur-lex for riveting prose like "the measurement, in millimetres, of the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle,…

battles over who has the right to make certain types of sausages What do you mean? There are people in England who think that the EU is going to ban British Sausages being called "sausages", forcing them to be called "emulsified high-fat offal tube". It was actually a joke from the political satire show "Yes, Minister" from 1984 (watch the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzeDZtx3wUw ). There are a lot of eu…

In all honesty, British sausage probably should be renamed.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#66

Post by Xylakant »

Gmo wrote: post #42
paganel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What Europe did: Banned all forms of animal protein, including chicken litter, in cow feed in 2001." I think this came in the aftermath of the Mad Cow Disease that affected the UK in the mid-'90s ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... ). I know that UK does not necessarily mean Europe, but nevertheless, that was really huge no matter where in Europe you happened to live, it showed that a…

Mad Cow Disease did not hit only the UK (France, for instance, was also significantly hit). But anyway, for this kind of regulations, it is definitely at the European level and it is quite likely MCD is the reason for it

UK was hit worst, but other european countries were affected as well. I was pretty young when that happened but I still remember the images of piles of cow carcasses being burned on the open field.

The MCD was the reason to ban feeding animal proteins to cows. Before MCD it was common practice to feed ground animal (cow) bones and leftovers from the slaughterhouse to cows.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#67

Post by gpvos »

Joeri wrote: post #62
AlexMuir wrote: post #52

HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others. In Europe we can barely stop people from selling horsemeat as beef. I'm not sure how effectively we are implementing any of these rules, and I'm sure a farmer who wishes to do so can flout them at will. One positive thing to come from the rise of supermarkets…

In my view the horsemeat-as-beef scandal demonstrates that the system works and that mislabeled meat gets detected. In this case the meat was perfectly edible, it was just mislabeled.

True in most cases, but there was at least one Dutch company that also mixed rotten meat into its products.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#68

Post by shabble »

sp332 wrote: post #23
BCM43 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is exactly the same besides the origin, why does it matter?

In the USA, you can't sell onions as "Vidalia onions" unless they're a specific species grown in a certain part of Georgia where the soil has very low sulfur content. It produces a sweet onion that you could only get with specially prepared soil anywhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidalia_onion So, you can imagine with something like sausage, where there are many ingredients that are subject to local conditi…

OT: Suddenly the name of the Tor control panel project[1] makes a lot more sense.

[1] https://www.torproject.org/projects/vidalia.html.en

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#69

Post by zeteo »

Xylakant wrote: post #61
zeteo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The same effect could be created by just using proper hygienic conditions in the slaughterhouse That's a pretty strong assertion. How did you find out that equivalent hygienic conditions could be created in slaughterhouses at a moderate cost? Aren't antibiotic sprays just getting the germs that got through, despite reasonable precautions being taken?

The article asserts that the increased usage is to compensate for speeding up the kill lines - so less precaution. Bacteria-related food poisonings due to spoiled meat are pretty rare in germany and since the practice is forbidden here I assume it must be perfectly viable, albeit properly more expensive to create proper conditions.

>The article asserts that the increased usage is to compensate for speeding up the kill lines

Yes, but we're not talking about restricting usage, this is about banning them altogether. It would be interesting to know how German producers dealt with the ban. Hopefully it didn't lead to an increased use of other chemical products that aren't banned yet but soon will be etc.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#70

Post by Xylakant »

jkldotio wrote: post #14
arethuza wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your comment about "right to make certain types of sausages" refers to the various protections around food actually coming from a particular area I actually think that is a good thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t... After all (to pick an example from the news today) - if something is described as "Stornoway Black Pudding" I'd like to believe it actually came from Stornoway: http://…

You mean like the traditional Croatian wine Prosek being banned from sale because it sounds too similar to prosecco which was developed long after (and they are different types of wine).[1] Or the feta cheese I buy from Germany that can't call itself feta and that anyone in day to day conversation will refer to as feta. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/us-croatia-food-eu...

Most of the feta cheese you buy as "feta" that tries to be and still isn't real feta is actually cow milk cheese. The taste and texture is different, so the product shouldn't be called feta. The fact that people colloquially refer to things by the wrong name shouldn't allow producers to mislead me by labeling things with the wrong name.
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