cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26864906
Britain must allow US chlorine-washed chicken into UK markets if it wants relief from sweeping tariffs, Donald Trump has indicated.
It comes after the UK failed to avoid tariffs imposed on the global economy, with the US president slapping a 10 per cent levies on all British exports to the United States.
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In a statement published alongside the tariff announcement, the White House said: “The UK maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict US exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products.”
It suggested that Britain’s ban on chlorinated chicken was among a range of “non-tariff barriers” that limit the US’s ability to trade.
The UK has long ruled out allowing imports of chlorine-washed chicken from the US due to health concerns, with Downing Street on Thursday reiterating its manifesto commitment to high food standards.
Asked whether the UK could allow imports of chlorine washed chicken in order to appease the US, the prime minister’s officials spokesperson said: “Our position on that is unchanged. You’ve got the manifesto commitment on food standards, which obviously remains.”
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The last major polling done on the issue, conducted in 2020, revealed that 80 per cent of Britons are opposed to allowing imports to the UK, and the same proportion is also against allowing chicken products that have been farmed using hormones.
There is also growing pressure from the farming industry to rule out concessions on the issue, amid fears it could undercut British farmers and drive down food standards.
Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.
The difference is that the chlorine disperses throughout the water and genuinely kills the bacteria, whereas the chlorine wash for chicken only sanitises the surface of the diseased chicken’s skin and any needle pushed through it. It does nothing to the meat and merely hides bacteria from detection.
America doesn’t have animal welfare rules anything like like the UK and EU have, and their chickens are usually kept in cramped conditions and bathe in their own filth all day long. It’s not very uncommon for their bellies to be actually rotting.
Chlorine washes the evidence away.
Criticism of the process is fair, but also an emotional knee jerk reaction over the use of chlorine is still unwarranted.
It’s not the chlorine, for goodness sake, it’s the disease it hides. Are you not listening? Chlorine wash after death is the only sanitary thing that ever happened to these poor mistreated disease-ridden lame birds. We don’t accept chlorine washed chicken because there’s no easy way to test whether it’s diseased meat or healthy meat.