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Comment by eneumann | Hacker News Reader

I had no idea there were that many salmonella infections in the US every year. Could irradiation be a solution? I know it is sometimes used on fruits and vegetables (wish it was used more, tbh).

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Take a look at how chickens/farmed animals in general are housed before before being "processed". Turns out it's cheaper to pump the animals full of antibiotics and wash the resulting meat with chemicals afterwards than to house them in clean and sanitary conditions. The EU/UK at least recognize how terrible this is, so they don't allow US meat that is handled this way.

Do we actually have fewer infections in Europe?

Yes, considerably.

> ”In the EU, over 91,000 salmonellosis cases are reported each year”

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella

And in the US, from the article:

> ” Salmonella hospitalizes and kills more people in the U.S. than any other foodborne pathogen, with about 1.35 million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations and more than 400 deaths each year.”

US population is 330 million, EU is about 450 million. The difference in salmonellosis prevalence is huge.

The rate of infections are very diverse in Europe. In Scandinavia it is extremely low, they test the chickens several times during their lifetime and kills the whole flock if any of them is contaminated. Until they joined the EU all eggs were "washed" which removed other unwanted pathogens. The EU forced them to accept unwashed eggs and allowed them for the time being to continue selling washed eggs. Most other countries does not use such draconian methods to their farming and the washing of eggs removes a thin membrane which gives some protection from salmonella travelling between the eggs.

chickens are not allowed antibiotics by law. That's the funny part of "our chicken is raised without antibiotics" advertising.

It is allowed in the US.

https://www.consumerreports.org/overuse-of-antibiotics/what-...

In the US, chickens are washed in a chlorine solution.

This is not allowed in UK/EU, as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source and that no-one will bother to do that if there's end-bleaching.

Don't you worry about that, BoJo is on the case. He'll get the UK onto chlorine washed chicken soon enough!

Citation needed

Is this why chicken should be rinsed, to remove the chlorine?

You shouldn't rinse chicken, period.

https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2019/08/20/washing...

also, AFAIK people rinse off meat to "get rid of the blood/slime", not to get rid of the chroline smell. Presumably they do a good enough job rinsing off the chlorine that it doesn't smell like pool water by the time it hits store shelves.

According to that linked article, it’s because ppl believe it’ll “clean” the raw chicken making it safer (which seems insane to me unless you’re using soap.. which would be a weird thing to do with meat).

As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash?

>As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash?

Exactly. I'm not a least-common-denominator that these public health recommendations cater to. Give me the real info please.

I am skeptical that they would rinse the chlorine off of the chicken at the factory. That seems like an extra step adding not only cost but risk of a bacterial bloom occurring between the factory and the store/home.

Chicken shouldn't be rinsed; it's a weirdly persistent myth, not actual safety advice.

I live in a non-chlorinated-poultry country, and there are still dept of health ads every Christmas warning people not to attempt to rinse turkeys; wherever the idea came from it probably wasn't chlorination.

The warning not to rinse turkeys is probably because you don't want a wet bird to go into a deep fryer, that is how explosions happen.

I would not expect a health agency, which requires processors to use a chlorine rinse that presumably the agency approves as "safe and healthy", to say that your chicken should be rinsed of any excess chlorine before cooking. They think the amount of chlorine is safe and want you to believe so as well.

And I know people rinse chicken for reasons other than what I am suggesting.

However I am still looking for a good answer to whether there is chlorine residue on chicken that can be removed by rinsing in the home. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough at first.

Woah hang-on there. People deep fry christmas turkeys?

Eeek.

It's not as bizarre as it sounds. They're not breaded, simply dinked into hot oil and deep-fried for half an hour or so. If you're not an idiot and follow basic precautions it's a pretty reasonable way to do things, as it's much quicker than roasting for multiple hours.

Basic precautions include:

* Do it outside away from structures

* Keep a fire extinguisher handy

* Make sure there's no ice in the bird

* Measure the displacement of the bird (by filling your pot with water), and add the appropriate amount of oil

* Heat the oil up to 250, then add the bird. Don't let the temp get over 350.

I have a propane stove I use for making beer; it's often sold as a turkey fryer stove

> * Measure the displacement of the bird (by filling your pot with water), and add the appropriate amount of oil

I don't disagree with this point (in fact I think it is prudent), but isn't the bird now wet once again, which was how this conversation started?

I've never dried off the bird particularly; if you don't dunk it until the oil is around 250, it typically drops the temp down to near 212 (100C) and the water boils off pretty gently. The real issue is if you have ice, which is often present in big chunks.

Put it in a plastic bag

It's pretty tasty. I just did one for the first time a couple weeks ago (as a test so I'd understand the process and timing a little better before Thanksgiving). I don't know if it's necessarily that much better than a good oven roasting, but I did a 14 pound turkey in 45 minutes.

With an electric turkey fryer (essentially an electric oven with the door on the top) frying a holiday turkey is easy and safe. It results in a very nicely cooked turkey without taking up any space in the kitchen (we plug it into an outlet outside the house).

>I would not expect a health agency, which requires processors to use a chlorine rinse that presumably the agency approves as "safe and healthy", to say that your chicken should be rinsed of any excess chlorine before cooking. They think the amount of chlorine is safe and want you to believe so as well.

why not? health agencies approve pesticides as well, but they advise you to rinse off vegetables/fruit.

>why not? health agencies approve pesticides as well, but they advise you to rinse off vegetables/fruit.

As far as I know, the rationale given for washing fruits and vegetables is not because of pesticides, but because of dirt and bacteria. As far as the public is to be concerned, any pesticide residue that makes it into your home is to be considered "acceptably low."

The USDA makes no mention of pesticides:

>Before eating or preparing fresh fruits and vegetables, wash the produce under running tap water to remove any lingering dirt. This reduces any germs that may be present. If the fruits or vegetables have a firm surface, such as apples or potatoes, they can be scrubbed with a brush.

> The warning not to rinse turkeys is probably because you don't want a wet bird to go into a deep fryer,

That's not a thing here; I think deep-frying turkeys is purely an American phenomenon. The reason that health authorities discourage it is that it can lead to aerosolized bacterial contamination.

> I would not expect a health agency, which requires processors to use a chlorine rinse

Chlorine rinses aren't allowed in the EU. Incidentally, they're not actually _mandatory_ in the US, though they are common practice there, I gather because they're seen as a cheaper way to meet salmonella prevalence goals than controls earlier in the process.

> However I am still looking for a good answer to whether there is chlorine residue on chicken that can be removed by rinsing in the home.

I mean, if you're in a chicken-chlorination country, maybe? But small amounts of chlorine don't seem particularly a problem.

> as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source

Well, there are two other problems:

- There's rather limited evidence that the chlorine thing is particularly effective for removing surface bacteria.

- Chicken meat can and commonly does harbour bacteria in the interior.

Good idea. Unfortunately it would need a better name because people panic hearing the R word, perhaps Green Washed (tm) for your protection [washed in gamma rays, that is].

On a related note, there may also be a huge issue with Prion diseases in the food supply but the USDA is not testing extensively for it. We just don't know and it has a decades-long incubation period. Irradiation may not be an option.

Uh. Is this real?

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/nvap/...

Are prions linked to irradiated food? They are terrifying but I know very little about them.

I only mentioned prions/BSE because the USDA is tasked with testing meat for safety, but their mission in practice tends to lean towards protection of producers and not consumers. There has been some controversy over how much to test and when.

I was looking for evidence that irradiation can neutralize prions (along with viruses and bacteria), not cause them.

There is a vaccine for salmonella. I might be wrong, but I believe it is mandated in other countries, but not in the US. Notably, California requires it for chickens that lay eggs, which means most eggs on the West Coast are vaccinated against salmonella.

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