I do not know whether chlorine-washed chicken, banned by the
EU since 1997, is unsafe to eat but I am prepared to give US regulators and
consumers the benefit of the doubt. I listened to a chap on Radio 4’s Today
programme on Wednesday, desperately attempting to defend UK and EU chicken
farming standards. Despite a very
friendly interview by Nick Robinson, he was not in the least convincing and his
five minutes of waffle amounted to nothing more than a defence of a good old
non-tariff barrier to trade of which the EU seems to be so fond. But smelling Tory blood, the BBC went further
and pursued the animal welfare route. To
make their case, they visited a Southern Counties agricultural show to ask a
few loaded questions about cruelty to animals versus the price of a
chicken. Of course, they got the answers
they wanted – slam-dunk case proved – if you want to be virtuous about animal
welfare (and who would not be) then you must be against chlorine washed
chicken. If you are against chlorine-washed
chicken (who could possibly defend this shamefully lazy safety measure) then you must be for
the EU!
There have been previous attempts to be virtuous about
chicken farming. Notably Jamie Oliver,
in 2008, attempted to persuade people not to eat battery-reared chickens
because of the appalling conditions in which these birds lived. By the way, at the time, British battery
chickens were kept in less cramped conditions than EU birds. Oliver hoped to persuade supermarkets to sell
more free range and organic birds. I
have no empirical evidence to show but, looking at the shelves in Aldi and
Lidl, he failed to convince the buying public.
Of course, the BBC had no interest in balancing its coverage by pointing
out that the price of food is very important to some people.
Meantime, the BBC went after Michael Gove asking whether we
would pursue a trade deal with the US at any (animal welfare) cost. Liam Fox was similarly discomfited in the US. All of this was gleefully swept up in the
Times today under the headline “Cabinet is split as Gove vows to ban US
chicken.”
The only grain of common-sense that I saw reported was from
Andrew Bridgen who said, “we are talking about a free-trade deal with the
largest country in the world – the issue of chlorinated chicken is a sideshow.” Quite!
Through all this, the motives of the BBC are disgracefully
transparent. The Corporation is institutionally
against leaving the EU and seems incapable of balanced reporting on the
subject. Their strategy, it appears, is
to pursue a relentless drip of stories and tittle-tattle designed to undermine the
public’s faith in Referendum decision and foment opposition to the Government’s
exit strategy and negotiations.
Shame on you BBC but, on the other hand, where is the
Governments robust and coherent response?
And whilst we are about animal welfare, why hasn’t the
debate been widened to include some of the disgustingly cruel practices recently
reported in Halal (literally “permissible” to Muslims) butchery?