“immersing poultry meat in chlorine dioxide solution of the strength used in the United States reduces prevalence of salmonella from 14% in controls to 2%. EU chicken samples typically have 15-20% salmonella.”
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... hicken.pdf "European opposition to imports of chlorinated chicken has been spearheaded by Germany, where the products are subjected to ridicule, often
based on an unscientific
apprehension."
"Tellingly, the EU’s own scientists have sided with the US, in agreeing that PRTs are safe."
On the contrary, after decades of safe use in the US, the scientific evidence has
confirmed that PRTs are effective. US households eat their way through 156 million
chickens treated this way each week, the National Chicken Council reported,
in testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance in 2014.
The quantities of chlorite and chlorate, the byproducts from using chlorine dioxide
to disinfect poultry, are too low to realistically impact human health. According
to data from the European Commission, a person would need to eat 5% of their
bodyweight in chlorinated poultry daily to consume their tolerable daily intake of
chlorate, or more than 23% to reach the same limit for chlorite.10,1112
The average adult woman would have to regularly eat more than two and a half
chlorinated chickens a day before suffering any noticeable health effects.13 The
typical man would have to eat nearly three whole birds each day. That is before
“the expected decreases in the levels of these [chlorite] residues after processing,
including cooking”, according to the European Commission.
Drinking water poses a far greater risk, contributing 99% of the disinfection byproducts
consumed in a typical daily diet, with chlorinated poultry making up just 0.3%
to 1% of total exposure.14
The British government limits the combined concentration of chlorite and chlorate
in water at 0.5mg per litre.15 At that upper bound, eating a whole chicken is roughly
equivalent to drinking a glass of water.
The volume of evidence in support of PRTs is so strong that they are deemed safe
not just by US regulators, but also by the EU’s own scientific advisors.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has said that four types of chemical
rinse, including chlorine dioxide, “would be of no safety concern”
New Zealand Food Safety Authority research found “no safety
issues were identified due to the use of chlorine dioxide”, and that “the concentrations
of chlorine required to induce formation [of carcinogens] are well in excess of
those used in practice”.17
It is also well established that PRTs are effective in reducing the prevalence of
foodborne illnesses, such as salmonella and campylobacter infections. Yet critics
of chlorine immersion highlight the inability of surface washing to disinfect the
interior of a chicken carcass, suggesting that poultry treated in this fashion is not
made safe.
If chlorination were so ineffective, then one would expect foodborne illnesses carried
by chicken to be much more prevalent in the US, and nearby countries, like
Canada, which also use PRTs to disinfect poultry. However, WHO figures reveal
that salmonella and campylobacter infections in North American countries are not
out of line with their European counterparts.18
Guidance published by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the body which sets
international food standards, states that immersing carcasses in a chlorine dioxide
solution of the strength used in the US has been shown to reduce salmonella prevalence
from 14% in controls to 2%.19
BENEFITS OF IMPORTING
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
