What is the flap about chlorinated chicken? (2018)

Both workers and chicken

I disagree! We pay the people who make the food we eat a pittance, we optimise our food production for cheap food rather than wellfare of workers and animals, we cut corners all over the place, but in the end all we manage to do is to make cheap, low-quality food that people only eat because they can't afford anything better... and they can't afford anything better because we pay them a pittance to do work that everyone neeeds done in the first place, like producing the food we eat.

There is a cost to producing food and it has to be paid one way or another. By making food cheaper and cheaper by exploiting everyone and everything along the line we only push this cost to where it can't be seen, not eliminate it. And the costs are coming back and biting us in the behind, constantly, in all sorts of ways: environmental destruction, obesity and other diseases, orthorexia, nutritional deficiencies, etc etc.

> I don't need sashimi-grade chicken if I'm going to be braising it for 2 hours.

With respect, but you don't need to braise supermarket chicken for 2 hours, either. I did it just yesterday, and the supermarket chicken simply disintegrated (I cooked it in my French oven, at medium heat). I'm used to our backyard chicken that has to be cooked for 2 hours, minimal, otherwise it's inedible, and I haven't cooked a supermarket bird for a while. I was going for a casserole but I got ... mush. That's just awful. What they do to those poor birds is horrible and I can't believe it doesn't affect their nutritional value. We'd all be much better if food was more expensive but better quality and a decent day's job paid enough to feed your family anyway. But that can't happen because the whole economy must be shaped like a pyramid, with all the money percolating to the top and all the work at the bottom. Greed and inequality are at the core of how we are forced to eat and what we do to ourselves, the environment and animals, in the process.