What’s the deal with "chlorinated chicken"?
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do we mean by chlorinated chicken? Why is it such a bad thing? What exactly are the UK standards that we’re so keen to promote and protect? To what extent can shoppers afford to prioritise animal welfare over price? And will the government keep its pledge not to undercut our food producers?
Using “chlorinated chicken” as a starting point, Charlotte Smith considers the questions around a future trade deal with the US - and others - on the British food sector.
She speaks to Cath Elliston from the youth-led movement BiteBack about its ‘Save Our standards’ campaign – and asks US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue why we should import US poultry.
Charlotte discusses current UK poultry production standards and how we compare to other countries with Dr Siobhan Mullan from Bristol Veterinary School, and visits Gloucestershire farmer Charles Bourns, who sees a growing market for higher welfare chicken.
We also hear from the Centre for Retail Research’s Professor Joshua Bamfield on consumer purchasing trends, and get more detail on our trade deal options from Emily Lydgate, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Sussex and deputy director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
Presented by Charlotte Smith, produced by Lucy Taylor in Bristol.
Transcript
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| 0:50.0 | Yes to coronated chickens or no? |
| 0:53.0 | No. |
| 0:54.0 | Under no circumstances. |
| 0:55.4 | I've made it perfectly clear that we are not going to dilute our high animal welfare |
| 1:00.0 | standards or our high environmental standards in pursuit of any trade deal. |
| 1:04.0 | A lot of people in the UK I think are really just put off by the word |
| 1:08.5 | chlorine and they don't realize that our salads are actually washing chlorine. |
| 1:13.0 | The suggestion is that they're kept in worse conditions |
| 1:16.0 | and that potentially this washing is masking poorer hygiene and poorer welfare. |
| 1:21.0 | There is a set of consumers who love that mythical idea of |
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