After failing to address the matter in parliament, the Government is now facing increased pressure to rule out chlorinated chicken from any trade agreements between the US and the UK.
The sale of hormone-treated beef and chlorinated chicken, which are legal in the US, is currently illegal in the UK.
Concerns that these norms might be compromised in upcoming trade agreements are mounting, especially in view of the UK's post-Brexit realignment.
But what is chlorinated chicken and is it bad for you?
What is chlorinated chicken?
It's just chicken that has been chlorine-treated. A procedure known as Pathogen Reduction Treatment (PRT) involves washing a chicken in water containing chlorine or other chemicals after it has been killed and prepared.
Why does the US chlorinate its chicken and why doesn’t the UK allow it?
The US chlorinates its chicken to get rid of dangerous bacteria that could make us sick, like salmonella, campylobacter, and E. coli.
The problem isn't the chlorine per se, but rather what it might be hiding. Concerns have been raised by the EU that chlorine washing may conceal unethical and animal-poor manufacturing methods. Imports of chlorinated chicken have been prohibited in the UK and EU since 1997 for this reason.
Instead, we use a "farm to fork" method rather than chlorine washing. Strict hygienic and animal welfare regulations must be adhered to at every stage of production to lower the possibility of dangerous germs growing.
While both the Government and the Conservative Party have previously resisted US demands that its producers be permitted to sell chicken in the UK with less stringent welfare requirements, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has advocated importing branded chlorinated chicken from the US into the UK.
Speaking ahead of the May 1 local elections in England, Mr Farage claimed that British consumers already accepted chlorine-washed lettuce and consume chicken raised in poor conditions in places like Thailand.
In a statement to the Sunday Times, he said: “If you have a look at the chicken we are currently importing from Thailand, you look at the conditions they’ve been reared in, and that every single bag of pre-made salad in every single supermarket has been chlorinated … once those basics have been accepted I’ll have a debate with you.”
When asked how he would stop low-cost American chicken producers from undercutting British farmers, he responded, “I want to promote British farming as being a high-end product. I think the growth of farmers’ markets, they are a much more discerning audience that wants to know where their meat comes from. I don’t think British farmers have anything to fear from this long term.”
Is chlorinated chicken bad for you?
Chlorine-washed chicken isn’t toxic in the quantity the average person could consume — the European Food Safety Authority even declares that exposure to chlorine residues on chicken ‘would be of no safety concern’.
And we already eat chlorinated foods; packaged salads in Europe are regularly treated in chlorine, while it is routinely added to UK tap water.
Chlorine-washing may not even be that effective. According to a 2018 University of Southampton study, chlorine can “make foodborne pathogens undetectable”. This means dangerous bacteria can still exist but are too few in quantity for food safety testing to detect.
