Bill regarding food imports standard to be debated today

[Fambo Number Mive]

While all the focus is on the main new story, MPs are debating the UK Agriculture bill today, which could decide whether trade deals allow for any old shite food to be imported e.g. chlorinated chicken:

Hormone-fed beef and chlorine-washed chicken should remain banned in England after Brexit, the government has been warned.

Ministers say the issue will be dealt with in the upcoming Trade Bill.

But opponents of these practices say that could lead to farm standards being bargained away in negotiations.

Instead, they want ministers to guarantee food standards in the Agriculture Bill, which returns to the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Some Conservative MPs have joined up with the opposition to demand protection for England's farmers from lower standard produce from countries like the US.

Farmers there are allowed to feed beef with hormones and wash chickens with chlorine solution in order to maximise productivity.

But both of these practices are currently banned in the EU. The US demands that ban should be lifted...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52638628

Farmers have urged MPs to ensure the new Agriculture Bill safeguards British food production from lower-standard imports in any future trade deals.

A coalition of farming and environmental organisations have written to all 650 MPs and urged them to debate the issue.

The Bill, seen as the biggest reform of British farming since 1945, returns for its final Report stage today (13 May) before heading to the House of Lords.

But industry groups say the legislation should ensure that any food imported meets the same high standards as is expected of UK food producers...

https://www.farminguk.com/news/mps-urged-to-back-british-farming-as-ag-bill-enters-final-stages_55634.html

[Johnny Yesno]

My god. Some of the comments under that BBC article...

1. Posted by DoIt Go on 11 minutes ago

Chlorine is in our swimming pools, our drinking water.

After butchering, we wash chickens inside and out with chlorinated drinking water. The US uses higher levels for better hygene. They don't use much - else it would smell like a pool.

Whoever demonized "chlorinated" chickens is a xenophobic genius.

9. Posted by Robin on 6 minutes ago

It's not chlorine in the swimming pool that stings your eyes, it is ammonia from the piss. Chlorine is a vital part of our diet and is required to digest food. That is why English taste powder, salt, is so delicious. You crave it. This is nonsense.

10. Posted by Brass Eye on 6 minutes ago

People should worry far more about about the fat, sugar and salt content of their food as that is going to really affect you health. Just see the figures of those in a Greggs vegan sausage roll.

15. Posted by Hiraneo on 2 minutes ago

Chlorinated chicken who banned it? Why did they ban it?
How many Brits die or fall sick from eating chicken in the USA?
How many Americans die from chlorinated chicken?

There is your answer.
To much hype with the anti USA propaganda.
I do not see people moaning about the high levels of lead in the paint from children toys from China. Guess that is what the anti USA brigade call healthy

16. Posted by tim on 2 minutes ago

Why does it matter? Just make it law that it should be labelled as such. It's nothing to do with health. Chlorine is a perfectly good disinfectant

19. Posted by Dave The Fish on 1 minute ago

A lot of UK travellers have visited the USA with their children and I don't know anybody that had a problem with eating the chicken or the beef!?

Where do you even begin?

That last one reminds me of this:

John Finnemore - RNLI scam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKWQ-iHDRJY

[dissolute ocelot]

Chlorine is just a distraction. It's the hormones in beef, dairy cattle, and salmon, which have been linked (questionably) to cancer, early puberty in children, obesity, low sperm counts, diabetes, and probably a race of feminised giants stalking the land mooing. Plus antibiotics and other veterinary drugs in meat being responsible for superbugs. All chlorine will do is turn your inside-hair green.

[Johnny Yesno]

Chlorine is just a distraction. ... All chlorine will do is turn your inside-hair green.

Jesus fucking christ. That's what happens when you quote BTL comments here. The idiocy leaks through.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

It's worrying about quacking plums that keeps me up at night.

[Sin Agog]

A little chlorine on toast can be quite delicious.  Don't ladle it on like jam, but spread it thinly, like marmite, and chlorine can be quite the treat.

[TheBrownBottle]

Chlorine is just a distraction. It's the hormones in beef, dairy cattle, and salmon, which have been linked (questionably) to cancer, early puberty in children, obesity, low sperm counts, diabetes, and probably a race of feminised giants stalking the land mooing. Plus antibiotics and other veterinary drugs in meat being responsible for superbugs. All chlorine will do is turn your inside-hair green.

Yes.  I've been imbibing bleach ever since I was told it cures COVID.  All that chlorine does wonders for your constitution.  I'm sure the blood-tinged vomit is simply a harmless side-effect.

[Quote]

Surely we should be looking at the average American and saying: "whatever they're eating, let's eat the opposite."

[BlodwynPig]

10. Posted by Brass Eye on 6 minutes ago

hmmmm

[steveh]

The massive Covid spread in American meat processing plants doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their normal hygiene procedures either.

[Pijlstaart]

Outside your London twitterati bubble, I think you'll find the silent majority have had enough. Back in the good old days we didn't ask where our food came from, we'd have what we were given and we were glad of it. Who remembers mashed potatoes from a tin, never did me any harm, and how much fun we had, not like now. Go on then, drive past a primary school, you won't believe the size of some of them, because they're not eating their natural foods, it's all asian foods, we don't know what's in it and if we ask all of a sudden we're racialist. That's the difference, that's what you ban. The American foods are as ours were, steak and kidney pudding, jam roly poly and kippers on sunday, it is what we are designed for.