• View ecochildsplay’s profile on Facebook
  • View ecochildsplay’s profile on Twitter
  • View ecochildsplay’s profile on Instagram
  • View ecochildsplay’s profile on Pinterest
  • View Jennifer Lance’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View ecochildsplay’s profile on YouTube
  • View ecochildsplay’s profile on Google+

Eco Child's Play

Live a greener, healthier life!

  • Environment
  • Pregnancy
  • Food & Recipes
  • Health News
  • Parenting
  • Green Toys
  • Beauty & Beauty Products
  • Green Home & Cleaning
  • Contact

Why Did the Chicken Take a Bath in Chlorine?

Janelle Sorensen, Healthy Child Healthy World:

Unfortunately, this question is not the set up for a joke. It’s a common practice in the United States to disinfect chickens in chlorine baths. According to the new book, Planet Home, by Jeffrey Hollender and Alexandra Zissu:

“One of the many hot-button topics when it comes to chicken – conventional vs. local/pastured vs. free range organic (local or not) – is how the birds are disinfected post-slaughter. Conventional chickens in the United States tend to be disinfected in chlorine baths, a procedure that has long been banned by the European Union. It’s also banned by USDA organic rules.”

Ew.

Now, I know it’s not straight chlorine – it has to be a specific dilution – but, even small levels of chlorine in water can interact with organic matter (like meat) to create dangerous by-products (not to mention the fact that the manufacture of chlorine is awful for the environment and horrible for the workers.)

Why do they do it? To kill pathogens, of course, which pose another laundry list of risks. SimpleSteps.org, a program of the NRDC, tells us:

Illness from contaminated food is a serious public health problem in the U.S. While modern poultry and egg production practices may be lowering prices, they are also increasing the risks of illness from pathogen-tainted eggs and meat. Common symptoms of foodborne illness include diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever, headache, vomiting, severe exhaustion, and bloody stools; sometimes infections produce more serious, lasting health problems or even death.

Factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses offer distressingly ideal conditions for the development and spread of pathogens. Almost all meat chickens (known as “broilers”) are raised today in factory farms, where they live on the floor of large buildings with twenty to thirty thousand of their sisters. Each bird has only 1/2 to 1 square foot of space — space that often is littered with months or even years of poultry waste, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

More ew.

What’s a concerned consumer to do?

Looking for the USDA Organic label may be the easiest solution, but it’s also much more expensive. For most of us, it’s more practical to get to know where our food comes from.

  1. Call the manufacturers of the chickens available at your local grocery store and ask what method of post-slaughter disinfection they use. Some major chicken producers use safer methods like electrolyzed water or ozone to disinfect their chickens.
  2. Find a local farmer, learn about their practices and buy direct from a source you can trust. Use LocalHarvest.org and the Eat Well Guide for help.
  3. Raise your own. Seriously. The backyard chicken movement is building every year and there are tons of resources to help you get started.
  • Raising BackYard Chickens, Build a Chicken Coop, Pictures of Breeds
  • Urban Chickens – Dedicated to promoting backyard chickens in urban residential landscapes.
  • Chicken Keeping Secrets – How To Keep Chickens at Home

(My family has decided to try this adventurous option – I’ll let you know how it goes. And if you have advice, please let me know!)

One final thought…I was asked to look into whether kosher or halaal foods allowed this practice. An agricultural specialist describes poultry processing here, making note of kosher and halaal requirements, but she doesn’t say anything about different disinfection processes. This leads me to assume chlorinated baths are allowed for kosher and halaal meats. Anyone know differently?

————–

P.S. I strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Planet Home. It’s not only a practical guide to cleaning and greening your home, it’s also an enlightening journey into conscious living. Throughout the book, the authors highlight the big picture of our interconnected human family and ecosystem, as well as provide inspirational tips for slowing down and appreciating life. (Being a very visual person, I also have to mention how awesome the graphics are. They really helped the words make a compelling cognitive impact.)

image courtesy of Sh4rp_i / CC BY-SA 2.0

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • More
  • WhatsApp
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Subscribe!

« 5 Green Parent Posts: NPR, Inhabitots, Natural Papa, SFGate Mommy Files, Jessica Gottlieb
When It Comes to Cancer; I Say Why Take the Chance »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search Content

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter


About Eco Child’s Play

Our ethos is to provide news, information, and opinions on natural, green parenting to help your family live a greener, healthier life! Additionally, we offer personal consulting services to help you achieve your green living goals.

Jennifer is a vegetarian, yoga teacher, gardener, hiker, teacher, and mother that has been living off-the-grid for over 20 years.

Contact Eco Child’s Play

Plants Over Plastics! Repurpose Compostable Home Products

Convenient Plastic Container Free Dropps Laundry & Dishwashing Pods

More from the archives!

Teaching girls about their period naturally with Lunapads

Hank D and the Bee: A Season of Giving

Denver’s Farm to Cafeteria Program [video]

Can Schools Help Reduce Obesity Rates?

Stimulus Package Gives Families $65 a Month Tax Break: Don't Spend It All In One Place

cbd salve joy organics

CBD Products that Actually Deliver: Joy Organics

wama hemp underwear

The Most Comfortable Underwear is Made of Hemp: WAMA Review

Information

  • About & Contact
  • Archive
  • Blog
  • Consulting Services
  • Disclaimer, Disclosure, & Sponsored Posts
  • Privacy Policy

May we open to grace: Hafiz

Cell Phones and Cancer-

Eco Child's Play Joins Simple Earth Media

What If Schools Had Solutionary Teams?

Birth By Surgery: Can the C-Section Be "Natural"?

Popular Categories

  • Breastfeeding
  • Health News
  • Natural Childbirth
  • Parenting
  • Education
  • Product Review
  • Green Toys

Get our posts via email

Please stay in touch!

You might also like to read…

Have You Hugged the Planet Today?

Kid Friendly Vegetarian Recipes: Kiwi Wraps or Rolls

Un-Analytics: How Google Went Solar

He could take a tooth and tell when that tooth's owner stopped nursing. His colleague Tanya Smith, who studies human evolution at Harvard, knew just the tooth to test first. "It's a first molar tooth from a Neanderthal from a site in Belgium called Scladina," Smith says. The tooth is 100,000 years old and perfectly preserved. Analyzing the tooth's barium distribution, the researchers determined that this Neanderthal started weaning after about 7 months, and then transitioned to a mixed diet. At 15 months, the barium signal dropped abruptly, as if mother and child had been separated.

How long should we breastfeed? Neanderthals breastfed for 7-15 months

essential oils sunburns

Essential Oils Treatment for Sunburns

Copyright © 2023 · Divine theme by Restored 316

Copyright © 2023 · Divine Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.