I was giving an eco-parenting talk last week when a pregnant-with-her-second-child mom asked me if it were true that all chicken is bathed in chlorine as part of its slaughterhouse processing. I was grossed out, appalled, and stumped. I wasn’t, however, surprised. Conventional meat is about as grim and questionable as it gets. The slaughterhouses must have some serious gunk in need of disinfecting, especially as it is done in (potentially cross contaminating) bulk. I haven’t personally used chlorine bleach in years and years and clearly would not want the food I feed my family to be dunked in it.
When I got home, I immediately started researching her query. I personally get chicken from three places: my local farmers market, a pastured meat and poultry CSA I belong to, and a butcher shop near my parents’ place in upstate New York called Fleisher's. I have never smelled anything even remotely chlorine-y about any of these birds. But apparently a lot of people have smelled the chemical on theirs.
My first mode of action was to email my CSA contact to find out what they do to “clean” poultry, and to see if they could help get me up to date on what USDA organic regulations are when it comes to chlorine (I highly doubted they permit such a caustic chemical). Then I started reading everything I could about chlorinated chickens. I had given the mom who asked my email address and she forwarded me some links. One article she sent from Britain’s Daily Mail lamenting a possible lift of a ban against US chicken pointed out that it “would have to be labeled as 'treated with antimicrobial substances' or 'decontaminated by chemicals'.” Would that we had such labels here! ...
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