Channel 4 exposé questions the safety of American chicken

Channel 4

Published: Monday 8 July 2019

US trade envoys have already made it clear that they want the UK to accept meat cleaned with chlorine washes and treated with antibiotics and feed additives such as ractopamine. The US Ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, has tried to dismiss UK consumer fears as a ‘smear campaign’ and describes using chlorine washes as a “public safety no-brainer” and insists thy are the most effective and economical way of dealing with “potentially lethal” bacteria.

The Channel 4 exposé found:

* Piles of chicken left on conveyor belts for long periods of time, at the risk of cross contamination.

* Boxes of chicken stacked on top of each other – which could also cause cross-contamination.

* Workers touching raw chicken with bare hands – while one cleared drains with gloved hands, merely washing the gloves before going back to touching raw chicken.

* Drains blocked with chicken – while pieces of and innards lay on the floor and water leaked from machinery.

* Flooded and broken floors where “bacteria could breed”, an EU meat safety expert warned.

* A worker having three fingers amputated, after being asked to operate a machine they had not been trained to use.

US farmers use chlorine washes as an ‘end of pipe’ solution to make meat fit for human consumption. The practice is banned in the UK under EU law because of safety concerns.

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Press office

Orla Delargy
Former Head of Public Affairs Orla Delargy left Sustain in 2024.

Orla was Head of Public Affairs for Sustain and also lead the communications for Sustain’s work on Good Food Trade. She worked to promote the opportunities and threats for food, farming and fishing as we exited the EU.

She has over 15 years’ experience of communications strategy and planning, media handling, corporate communications, public affairs and reputation management in two Whitehall Departments, the private and third sectors. Orla joined Sustain from LEON restaurants, where she led a campaign to save universal infant free school meals, an issue which helped shift voter intentions in the 2017 national elections.

She also led on the communications for the launch of LEON on mainland Europe. Before joining LEON, she was head of campaign strategy and chief press officer at the Department for Education, advising ministers on communications around high priority areas such as changes to testing, the national curriculum, teacher recruitment and the school food plan.