I always thought the EU doesn't want this procedure because it effectively allows farmers to take a short cut and cover up bad practices used earlier in the chain. Under this premise, this quote just argues against a straw man for an otherwise meaningless counterargument.
Lol. Sure, lets all just drink hydrogen peroxide. It's water, essentially.
Peroxides and carboxylic acids(vinegar is an example) are very different things...
On the other hand, peracetic acid is something I would accept as a chemical treatment without qualms, while chlorine compounds would squick me out. It actually will break down into vinegar when it oxidizes something, and on the surface of raw meat, this process will be completed by the time a consumer gets it.
I use hydrogen peroxide to disinfect contact lenses. It neutralizes into water and oxygen in the presence of a catalyst. It would do that over a long enough period when exposed to air. I linked a paper in the thread elsewhere that shows the same decay for the chicken washes.
Using peroxide as a lens disinfectant has advantages over other multi-purpose solutions which cause increased corneal staining and are at much higher risk of allergic reactions.
But they do all breakdown fairly safely (peroxide becomes water iirc) and don't warrant the hysteria they're being given.
Why aren't they just using vinegar if it's the same thing?
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 oxidizing effect likely provides the effect which is desired - the same which chlorine would produce, that is, oxidizing a lot of things in chickens making them safer.
I've heard that hydrogen peroxide is used in Europe instead of chlorine in US for water treatment - for example, in swimming pools. I'm not sure why peracetic acid is chosen.
Why aren't they just using vinegar if it's the same thing?
Do you really not like chicken adobo? You are the first [non-vegetarian] person I've ever encountered for whom this is the case.
That's warning sign right there. It has a certain interpretation which is different from "good science". Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_science#Use_as_corporate_...
> Theories more favorable to corporate activities are portrayed in words as "sound science." Past examples where "sound science" was used include the research into the toxicity of Alar, which was heavily criticized by antiregulatory advocates, and Herbert Needleman's research into low dose lead poisoning. ...
> According to epidemiologist David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health in the Clinton Administration, the tobacco industry invented the "sound science" movement in the 1980s as part of their campaign against the regulation of second-hand smoke
But no, it isn’t essentially: vinegar contains acetic acid:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetic_acid
which is a "carboxylic acid" with the following GHS statements:
“GHS hazard statements H226, H314
GHS precautionary statements P280, P305+351+338, P310”
Vinegar doesn't contain peracetic acid:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracetic_acid
which is an "organic peroxide" with the following GHS statements:
“GHS hazard statements H226, H242, H302, H312, H314, H332, H400
GHS precautionary statements P210, P220, P233, P234, P240, P241, P242, P243, P260, P261, P264, P270, P271, P273, P280, P301+312, P301+330+331, P302+352, P303+361+353, P304+312, P304+340, P305+351+338, P310, P312, P321”
I would mostly be concerned about the sub-products of peracids reacting with foods. I don't know if there is any studies on this subject.
I think they'd argue "cleanliness" is not the only aspect of what "good" is. The chickens' diets and living conditions affect the quality of the chicken. To say nothing of the animal cruelty angle...
Since a young age I visited egg farms and I can tell you the conditions are far from ideal, they even turn on the lights at 3am to enhance egg production. We're talking about egg farms that are regulated by EU laws. About 12 years ago the EU regulated how many chickens were allowed in a single case (about 8 I believe).
Even with EU regulation it is well known that the amount of antibiotics is simple too much and dangerous, we've law holes like: It is regulated in France but you can cross the border and get it in Spain as they don't control who buys it.
If this gets approved, I demand it to be labeled.
Could it be woody breast?
https://old.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/c9lbu3/psa_can_we_tal...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bigger-chickens-bring-a-tough-n...
I think that's a diet thing, though.
Woody breast tends to give a striated appearance to the meat.
I can tell you that chicken breast in the UK, France and Portugal looks and tastes the same to me.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2016/05/ukraine-poultry-giant-...
If the EU allows this as well (or finds some weird amended way to do the same while proclaiming something else) what's next?
EU - ~500 Million people. "In the EU, over 91,000 salmonellosis cases are reported each year." [1]
US. ~330 Million People. "CDC estimates Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the United States every year. Food is the source for most of these illnesses." [2]
1- https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella 2- https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/index.html
> Unfortunately Morris is making the statistical rookie error of comparing two statistics measuring completely different things. For the US, he reports estimates of total illnesses whilst for the UK he uses recorded lab reports. The actual number of illnesses in any country are unknown as many will not be diagnosed or reported. We do know for sure that the number will be far higher than lab reports of known, reported cases.
> And in fact, the lab report data are available for both countries and could have made a valid comparison. The US reported 46,623 salmonella lab cases in 2016, a rate of 14.5 per 100,000 people and a similar rate for Campylobacter. The latest UK figures (reported on the Reality Check article) are 10,089 for Salmonella (around 17 per 100,000 people) and 63,946 for Campylobacter (over 100 per 100,000 people). It might justifiably be queried whether lab reports are collected on the same basis in the US and UK but on the basis of what we have, rates are actually higher in the UK than the US.
Perhaps the US has a significantly higher per capita consumption of Salmonella infection vectors. Perhaps people in the US are less clean in ways that increase infections. Perhaps EU cases are under reported.
Maybe USA eats more salads - but agreed, pushing out this data without a breakdown going X % was due to chicken and outlying the data without that context to induce a perception that all is due to such chicken is a bit off-key.
> Outbreaks due to Salmonella are on the rise, with S. Enteritidis causing one in six food-borne disease outbreaks in 2016. Salmonella bacteria were the most common cause of food-borne outbreaks (22.3%), an increase of 11.5% compared to 2015. They caused the highest burden in terms of numbers of hospitalisations (1,766; 45.6% of all hospitalised cases) and of deaths (10; 50% of all deaths among outbreak cases).
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/salmonella-cases-n...
For one thing, those two quotes are talking about different stats: “cases reported” vs “estimates”. How many cases are reported in the US? What is the EU’s estimate of the actual total?
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.
I understand the concerns about using such processes over having a clean processing facility but I don't trust the cheap labor (prisoners, migrant farmers, etc) the US uses to not cause an outbreak. For those doubting this logic please look at the shit lettuce outbreaks we have every 2-3 months.
The issue at hand is that the EU doesn't want low quality chicken entering the market because it could cause health issues if not cleaned properly, and at the volume we produce, it's likelier than not to be done improperly at some point, at scale. It's just not worth the risk.
But, I could be missing the mark entirely. This is all from memory when I read up on EU food standards a few years ago. My memory of all of these things could be completely off here.
The data on salmonella is not super solid, but points to higher levels in the U.S. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47440562
Salad has routinely been chlorine-washed in Europe for years, and nobody complains about that.
All I got from a Google search is yoga mom blogs. I'd like to see what a .gov health agency has to say about it.
Does one process result in a less healthy product or not?
In other words what is the advantage of being sterile all they eat through versus ensuring sterility at the end of the process? Is one more prone to letting pathogens slip through?
https://chemicalwatch.com/biocideshub/47111/eu-commission-ap...
> 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.
If you're fine with using vinegar elsewhere in food, you should be fine with this.
Sanitized poop is still poop. I'd rather the poop not be there at all, as much as possible.
In Germany, this was the favorite scare topic of the press in articles about the TTIP negotiations.
So I doubt that they will be able to include that in any new treaty without causing a major freak-out here in Germany.
They do that with a lot of things, and then it’s really easy not to buy it.
The noises from the UK are that it won't [0]. But in reality let's see.
We won't really know what happens until the ink has dried on the trade deal with the US and it has been published.
> The UK will not lower food standards to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, the government says.
I'm not a vegetarian, but god I hope the American chicken never enters this market.
In Europe we believe it's indirectly harmful: Being able to wash germs off meat and eggs allows tolerating more diseases in the farms. If you can't just sanitize diseases off products, you have to keep the farms clean of diseases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonellosis_in_the_United_St...
Not all meat is cruel.
To be clear, I'd still consider killing me cruel even if you treated me nicely up until that point.
Isn't all chicken "chemical-washed chicken"? Surely, they wash it in water at some point?
1 - https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-snl-sketch-2004-chicke...
I have stopped eating meat in 1990, due to the discusting way the animals are treated and I couldn't care less. At well over 40s I still look young, no gray hair, medical results are fabolus.
BUT!!! I would seriously ask all the vegans/vegetarians to STFU, they are annoying to the point where everyone attacks me when I tell him that I don't eat meat and try to argue. It is embarasing that, as a vegetarian (lacto/ovo whatever, who cares), I rather don't tell this to anyone, due to radical groups too stupid to understand, that their aggressive actions are beeing counterproductive. There was an old saying that fighting for peace is like f* for virginity. It just doesn't work. And I am so sorry that I think that there is no need to make every meat eater on barricades due to agrasive stand you unneededly take.
Just let people eat whatever they want. They will figure out on their own.