Chlorinated Chicken Not A Food Safety Issue, Says Former Food Standards Agency Head
3 June 2019, 10:44 | Updated: 3 June 2019, 13:31
The former chair of the Food Standards Agency said issues around chlorinated chicken are about food safety but animal welfare instead.
Lord Krebs said that nobody was claiming chlorinated chicken is "more dangerous" than chicken processed in other ways, but that the debate should be focussed instead on animal welfare and plant hygiene.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari, the former Chair of the Food Standards Agency said the issue was "about our attitude towards animal welfare" and the bugs present in uncooked meat.
"Broadly speaking, in Europe our approach is to try to keep the chickens as disease free as possible, and to be careful in the processing plant not to spread any disease that there is in the chickens," he said.
"The American approach is that it doesn't matter how dirty they are because they're going to clean them up at the end."
Lord Krebs continued: "It is really about our attitude towards animal welfare and how we control the bugs that are inevitably there.
"For me, the issue comes down to our attitudes towards welfare, and our attitudes to how we manage our bugs that are in the chicken when we're dealing with them in the factory."
Watch above.
