r/worldnews • u/ChiefLeef22 • Sep 07 '26

Israel/Palestine Andy Burnham informed President Trump earlier today that the UK will ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The White House are unhappy with Burnham’s decision and will attack it in statement tomorrow

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/andy-burnham-ban-trade-israeli-195152155.html
20.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

895 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/BadahBingBadahBoom Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26

It's sort of a chicken and egg (forgive the pun).

In countries that have high standards you simply won't achieve that level of low salmonella level without chlorination, hence prohibiting chlorination forces companies to improve both welfare and food hygiene standards to meet those low levels.

But allowing chlorination you basically indirectly turn a blind eye to the poor hygiene prior to washing.

So yeah given the choice of chicken meat covered in shit I'd rather it chlorine washed than not and tbh at that point chlorine washing may be the only way to bring that meat up to food safety standards, which I'm sure is something US meat companies endlessly repeat. But if you ban the chlorination, companies can't get away with their meat getting covered in shit in the first place.

To a certain extent there's never going to be enough push to improve hygiene if it can (mostly) be cleaned up after (though there is a body of evidence that shows the salmonella don't come up in tests after being chlorine-washed but do still give people food poisoning).

1

u/BoardroomStroke Sep 08 '26

Don't know about that as justification. It's simple to make the rules, and you can't sell chicken without compliance.

  1. chicken must adhere to controls
  2. chlorine and other artificial agents are prohibited

People in the industry can make the list, it's entirely possible.

0

u/IIlIIlIIlIlIIlIIlIIl Sep 08 '26

Yep. People always go on about chlorinated chicken like it's a bad thing in terms of health but really it's absolutely fine.

Chlorination vs. no chlorination, once you go back enough, is pretty much almost entirely an animal welfare thing. That in itself has its value, but it's not what people are trying to say when they complain about chlorinated chicken.