There’s a very specific reason Europeans shun American chicken–it’s bathed in chlorine. Chlorine reacts with the water in human bodies to produce harmful acids that can irritate skin and eyes and cause trouble breathing. Who wants that on their meat? Certainly not the Germans. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was quoted by Bloomberg as saying, “There will be no imports of chlorinated chicken from the U.S. I have prevented those imports for years, and I will continue to prevent them. No question.”
Bloomberg continues:
Europe’s concerns aren’t totally unfounded. Last year Washington Post reporter Kimberly Kindy published a disturbing look at the possible human toll of heavy chemical use at U.S. poultry factories:
“In interviews, more than two dozen USDA inspectors and poultry industry employees described a range of ailments they attributed to chemical exposure, including asthma and other severe respiratory problems, burns, rashes, irritated eyes, and sinus ulcers and other sinus problems.”
It has also been argued that chemical cleansing encourages faster, sloppier practices on the slaughter line. Citing government sources and documents, Kindy writes: “To keep speeds up, the new regulations ‘would allow visibly contaminated poultry carcasses to remain online for treatment’—rather than being discarded or removed for off-line cleaning, as is now common practice,” she writes. “The proposed rules say ‘all carcasses’ on the line would be treated with antimicrobial chemicals ‘whether they are contaminated or not.’”
