DailyDirt: How Clean Are Our Chickens?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
For years, there has been concern over using antibiotics in our food supply, feeding animals "sub-therapeutic" medicines that make them grow bigger. The chicken industry seems to be shifting slowly towards removing certain antibiotics from its farms, but are consumers really aware of what the progress is (and isn't)?- The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) covers a lot of areas, and one topic that seems to gross out our European neighbors is our chlorinated chicken. While Europeans have painstakingly reduced the incidence of salmonella from their chicken farms with breeding and testing procedures, US growers just give our chickens a bath in chlorinated water tanks. [url]
- The antibiotics tylosin and virginiamycin are used in chicken feed to help the birds gain weight and grow more efficiently. The problem is that these antibiotics are also "critically important" in human medicine, and the uncontrolled use of these drugs in our food chain could endanger the effectiveness of medicines and create superbugs for us. [url]
- Perdue Foods now raises an antibiotic-free chicken (well, no antibiotics that are used in human medicine, at least), claiming to be the first to do so for all of its hatcheries. Other chicken growers (eg. Tyson) have been testing antibiotic-free chickens for several years as well, with chickens raised with different kinds of antibiotic-like substances (aka ionophores). Perdue's chickens may also be treated with ionophores, but US farmers are trying to move closer and closer towards an antibiotic-free process. [url]
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Filed Under: antibiotic-free, antibiotics, chicken, farming, food, food chain, ionophores, salmonella, superbugs, ttip, tylosin, virginiamycin
Companies: perdue foods, tyson
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Don't try keeping ducks though as they're a bit harder to take care of. Ducks are like chickens without the survival instinct. Chickens are fully aware of how delicious they are and are always keeping an eye out for predators while ducks think they're on vacation all the time. Trying to keep them out of danger can be like herding cats, plus there's the different environment they need as water fowl, so if you attempt to keep some, be prepared to do a lot of work for the little idiots.
As for turkeys... they deserve to be shot and eaten. They always have it coming.
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Gonna give up pickles and salad dressing too?
These kinds of anecdotes tell us nothing about food safety.
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Chlorinated chickens
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Re: Chlorinated chickens
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Doesn't chlorine evaporate?
Isn't that why you need to keep adding chlorine to pools even if no one has been swimming in them?
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I don't have a problem with the use of chlorine when processing foods as such. But, like with the use of antibiotics, it can be used to cover up the effects of genuinely terrible food practices, so I take its use as a sign of poor quality.
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Re: Chlorinated chickens
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Chemophobia and useful idiots
All available studies, including those done by the EU's own Food Safety Authority, say that treating foodstuffs with chlorine dioxide if safe. And then there's the fact that chlorine dioxide is already used in the EU for disinfecting produce, without killing anyone. What DID kill people were the "organic" farmers who refuse to use "chemistry", with predictable results
So, why all the ruckus? Simple protectionism. By playing on the public's fears of "CHEMISTRY!!!!" in food, Weisenhof and other big breeders have conveniently blocked any imported competition, and the green movement, who'd normally like nothing more than take those big industrial farmers down, have become their prime accomplices. And after a busy day of protesting the impending chemical armageddon, they munch a bowl of salad treated with the same stuff...
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The real problem with chlorinated chicken...
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I guess that's why Europeans take the same precautions for storing and cooking chicken than people elsewhere. And get the same results when not following them.
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And I'm talking about air-chilled AMERICAN chicken, Bell & Evans foremost among the brands. Whole Foods sells both Bell & Evans and house-branded air-chilled chicken.
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http://pllqt.it/7xS6tq
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The real problem with chlorinated chicken...
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Beef yet .
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Bell & Evans
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TYLOSIN AND VIRGINIAMYCIN
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Perdue not Purdue
Perdue is the East coast chicken empire.
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The best way to do this with beef is to go in with a 3 or 4 friends and buy half a grass-fed cow directly from the rancher who raised it. You'll be dealing with a real human being from a small operation, you'll be able to actually go and see the cows and that they're being treated decently. You'll need a chest freezer or similar, but you'll have enough meat for about a year (YMMV, but it's a lot of meat).
When I've done this, the meat + the butchering cost brings the total price to about half what I'd pay for the best cuts retail, and the meat itself is far superior to anything else I've tasted. In fact, I'd never understood what my vegetarian friends were talking about when they said that they could "smell the death" on meat until the first time I went this route. The first time I opened a package of the good stuff, the thing that I noticed was the lack of a particular scent. I was never aware of it until its absence, but now I can smell it on most meat, and describing it as "death" is not too far off. Although, I call the smell "slaughterhouse".
If you are buying beef or pork from the supermarket, buy the stuff that came from the smallest local farm you can. Go grass-fed for beef (it's what they're meant to eat, it makes them the healthiest, and it makes a big difference in the resulting taste). If you want to minimize e. choli risk then buy solid cuts, the bigger the better, and cut them down further yourself.
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SomaGenix
Somagenix,a leading supplier of API’s and steroid hormone powders in Hong Kong. Our state of the art facility employs top chemical engineers and technicians while meeting quality assurance and compliance with North American and European standards. Our company allocates a substantial percentage of its investment towards Research and Development as we believe it is crucial in meeting market demands and innovation.
We are an established and professional company that has been operating for over a decade. We pride ourselves as being a leader in steroid hormone powder production along with a great focus on high quality customer service which sets us apart from the competition.
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