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Is it me, M.O.M.’s, or does it feel like you have to put on a Hazardous Materials suit just to cook chicken? I just read the latest “Consumer Reports” findings on diseases in our nation’s supply of chicken and it is a MUST-READ for M.O.M.’s who feed their family chicken, which is most of you! Since my mom’s death from cancer, as you know, I have been on the hunt to learn where we as a nation are consuming known disease-causing agents and while we don’t know it to cause cancer directly yet, the chickens Americans eat are profoundly dirty and disease-riddled. The two main offenders are salmonella and campylobacter which seem to take up residence in chickens nationwide as if the chicken-companies like Tyson Foods are giving them VIP access while also reporting record profits? The first time I read such a report, was back in 2007 from another Consumer Reports investigation of chicken and I was astounded then: 80% of chickens tested were found to have disease! And have you ever read “Suggested Handling Instructions For Chicken”? They read like a military manifesto: If you are going to war (with your chicken), make sure to…I mean, check out these guidelines on ‘proper handling‘ of chicken (I have put in bold things that scare me and help reinforce why I have become a vegetarian):
- Make chicken one of the last items selected before heading to the checkout line
- Choose well-wrapped chicken and put it in a plastic produce bag to prevent it from leaking
- Store chicken at 40 degrees F. or below. Chicken that is not going to be cooked within a couple of days should be frozen
- Thaw chicken in the refrigerator on a plate or on a plate in a microwave oven. Cook chicken thawed in a microwave right away. Chicken should never be thawed on the countertop
- Separate raw chicken from other foods
- Wash hands immediately after preparing raw chicken and clean all surfaces that were touched by the raw chicken
- To kill harmful bacteria, chicken should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees F. Always use a meat thermometer
- Do not return cooked chicken to the plate that held it raw
- Refrigerate or freeze uneaten chicken within two hours of cooking
Here are six unsettling findings in the lastest Consumer Reports investigation of America’s chicken supply to your dinner table (I have put in bold what M.O.M.’s definitely need to know):
- Campylobacter was in 62 percent of the chickens, salmonella was in 14 percent, and both bacteria were in 9 percent. Only 34 percent of the birds were clear of both pathogens. That’s double the percentage of clean birds we found in our 2007 report but far less than the 51 percent in our 2003 report.
- Among the cleanest overall were air-chilled broilers. About 40 percent harbored one or both pathogens. Eight Bell & Evans organic broilers, which are air chilled, were free of both, but our sample was too small to determine that all Bell & Evans broilers would be.
- Store-brand organic chickens had no salmonella at all, showing that it’s possible for chicken to arrive in stores without that bacterium riding along. But as our tests showed, banishing one bug doesn’t mean banishing both: 57 percent of those birds harbored campylobacter.
- The cleanest name-brand chickens were Perdue’s: 56 percent were free of both pathogens. This is the first time since we began testing chicken that one major brand has fared significantly better than others across the board.
- Most contaminated were Tyson and Foster Farms chickens. More than 80 percent tested positive for one or both pathogens.
- Among all brands and types of broilers tested, 68 percent of the salmonella and 60 percent of the campylobacter organisms we analyzed showed resistance to one or more antibiotics.
The bottom line for Moms: find a local farmer who grows their chickens without disease. Or find a local butcher who you trust! Or get really crazy, and cut back on the amount of chicken you serve your family and buy the more expensive ‘clean chickens‘. Clean meat isn’t cheap and therefore can be viewed as a delicacy in your family, a treat, and not merely an everyday-staple food. I know it sounds crazy, and it probably sounds like it will take a lot of hard work and a change in your routines of just getting any old chicken from any old grocery store. But do you really want to be bringing diseases into your house in the form of chicken every week? Really? If you and your family are going to eat chicken, make it disease-free chicken where your alert level doesn’t have to be Code Red and your kids aren’t running the risk of being the 3 million each year who get sick or the 100′s who die from such poisonings each year!
Related Articles
- 9. Approximately how many chickens were produced for consumption worldwide in 2009? (greenanswers.com)
- Waiter, There’s Poison in My Poultry (food.change.org)
- From Factory Farms to Supermarket Secrets (friendseat.com)
- Food Poisoning Hits 1 in 6 Americans Each Year: CDC (nlm.nih.gov)
I fully support all efforts to conserve, reuse and recycle – and it should be something that the whole nation should be doing – NOW!
Thank you, I have recently been searching for information about this topic for ages and yours is the best I have discovered so far.