You were right to report (23 April) that government officials have actively considered how to respond to US pressure to accept imports of “chemical-washed chicken” and other processed products.
This matters to the public, for whom chlorinated chicken has become a test case for whether UK standards are lowered for commercial and political reasons.
If the UK accepted imports from the US of such products, our food supply would be significantly less safe. It’s why the EU and UK actively resisted such demands, saying that washing meat with chlorine is far from the answer to unhygienic meat.
A 2018 study found that applying chlorinated water provides illusory reassurance. The treatment is not an effective disinfectant; it merely blocks the customary (bacterial culture) test by which the presence of harmful bacteria should be detectable.
That evidence also helps explain why rates of microbiological food poisoning are significantly higher in the US than in the UK and the EU. It would therefore be reckless for a UK government to relax the prevailing restrictions on imports of US food products unless the US authorities can demonstrate that their products are at least as safe as those achieved by UK and EU producers.
Erik Millstone
Emeritus professor of science policy, University of Sussex
Tim Lang
Professor emeritus of food policy, City St George’s, University of London
• Please do not dismiss campylobacter as a mere “bacteria that can cause diarrhoea”. I contracted it when I was one month pregnant; it did not cause diarrhoea but rather long-lasting severe lower abdominal pain. When eventually diagnosed, I was put on a high dose of an unpleasant antibiotic, leaving me with a tinny taste and no appetite for weeks. I was over five months pregnant before I began to feel remotely normal.
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