Chlorinated Chickens? If You’re American, You’re Eating It!
Chlorinated chickens you say? Your first reaction may be of disbelief or disgust, and it should be! Once again the food industry has hidden this from the public for more than a decade. Here is the low down.
As demand for food increases due to the vast population on this continent, the food industry looks for inexpensive ways around disinfecting food sources. In the case of chickens, its chlorine! Case in point, the large automated plant in California that treats thousands of chickens at one time in their enormous vats. There is approximately one gallon of chlorine per chicken being used to disinfect for salmonella, e-coli and other harmful bacteria.
Had I known all along that this was the case, I wouldn’t have eaten any chickens. The food industry knows that most people would react this way so it was not made public. Instead, they leave it to the FDA to let the public know if the food is in fact safe.
Excuse me, but there is an echo in here! Did you here anything about this? Not me, nor my family and friends. I only heard about it because of Obama’s visit to Berlin, where apparently the US is putting pressure on Europe to lift a long time ban on the US importing its chlorinated chickens.
So far, Europe has not buckle under the pressure and exposed their citizens to this bizarre practice as they have much stricter laws when it comes to all types of food sources.
There are other methods for disinfecting poultry such as using electrolyzed water or ozone therapy to name a few, which do an excellent job of disinfection.
One of my concerns besides consuming the harmful chemical chlorine, is that there is the potential for chickens of ill health possibly making it through the chlorine process and being sold to the public. I have in fact not purchased chickens recently from my super market because of a chemical and foul smell. I’m sure I’m not alone in this!
So where do you get un-chlorinated chickens? This is not necessarily an easy answer. You will need to do your homework and check with your local butcher or health food store, and if they don’t know then you need to insist they find out. It’s you and your family’s health that you need to look out for.
Now that you know, would you eat chlorinated chickens?
Tags: chlorinated chicken, health, nutrition, wellness
July 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Geez, what an alarmist! You people slay me. This is classic case of making a mountain out of a… well… nothing.
Why do you want un-chlorinated chicken anyway? You make no rational case to support your position, other than fear and ignorance.
Chlorine is a highly efficient disinfectant, and, for instance, has been added to public water supplies to kill disease-causing bacteria for over 150 years! Are you going to stop drinking water now too?!
When done properly (as has been the case for 100’s of trillions (yes, trillions) of gallons of drinking water) then all is fine. The benefits are enormous. 1,000’s of lives have been saved (perhaps each year) by chlorinating water. And this may well be the case with chlorinating chicken as well. That is my rational for chlorinated chicken.
You said it yourself, you did not even know it. That is a good thing…it means it is working.
Eat your chicken and shut-up.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:12 am
There are studies that confirm that low doses of chlorine as a potential health hazard. Here are just a few of the hundreds of studies done.
From 1986 to 1989, the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda MD, concluded that of 1900 cases studied, long term drinking of low dose chlorine in drinking water increased the risk of cancer of the bladder.
A study done in 2000 by the EPA Health Scientists done on several generations of parenting dogs and their pups concluded that drinking low doses of chlorinated water over several generations produced, less pups per litter, smaller pups with smaller kidneys, and an increase in death for newborn pups.
In 2003 a study done by the Occupational And Environmental Medicine concluded that children inhaling fumes from a swimming pool have a much greater risk of developing lung infections and have a higher risk of developing asthma.
The point here is that we already are at potential risk with chlorine in our drinking water and now our chickens are soaked in it. There are better alternatives as mentioned above in the article. It really is at this point a matter of individual preference as what you want to do with information.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:33 am
[...] un-invented). One we didn’t know about, but which has ruined chicken for us forever, is chlorinated chicken (seen at right). “Why would chicken carcasses be bathed in chlorine?” you ask? Well, [...]