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U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

latimes.com

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Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#161

Post by jshevek »

paganel wrote: post #67
mech1234 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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).

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#162

Post by _2d30 »

bosswipe wrote: post #143
_2d30 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#163

Post by jshevek »

magduf wrote: post #73
mech1234 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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...

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#164

Post by zaarn »

avmich wrote: post #62
take_a_breath wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==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 oxid…

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.

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#165

Post by eesmith »

gadders wrote: post #146
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#166

Post by ubercow13 »

jaksawesome wrote: post #118
antr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the EU doesn't the UK will

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).

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#167

Post by ars »

ceejayoz wrote: post #158
ars wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#168

Post by joecool1029 »

rayiner wrote: post #110
magduf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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.

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#169

Post by jkh1 »

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.

1- https://mbio.asm.org/content/9/2/e00540-18.full

Re: U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal

#170

Post by megous »

jessaustin wrote: post #137
megous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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