When ~~President~~Dicktator Trump recently griped about Europe's distaste for buying American chicken, his comments touched on a long-running and divisive trade spat that's flared up from time to time.
Europeans disparage U.S. poultry as "chlorinated chicken," or "Chlorhünchen" in the German press, and see it as possibly unsafe.
The phrase refers to the use of chlorine in poultry processing plants after the birds have been slaughtered in order to cut down on harmful bacteria that are frequent sources of food-borne illness like Salmonella and Campylobacter.
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"The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years," says Dianna Bourassa, an applied poultry microbiologist at Auburn University, "So that's not the issue."
Less than 5% of poultry processing facilities still use chlorine in rinses and sprays, according to the National Chicken Council, an industry group that surveyed its members. (Those that still do use a highly diluted solution at concentrations deemed safe.)
Nowadays, the industry mostly uses organic acids to reduce cross contamination, primarily peracetic, or peroxyacetic acid, which is essentially a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide.