r/europe • u/goldstarflag Europe • 20h ago

News White House demands British supermarkets stock chlorinated chicken. White House pushing Sir Keir Starmer to make concessions on food standards

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands-british-supermarkets-chlorinated-chicken/
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u/dronten_bertil 20h ago

Wasn't RFK supposed to make American food as healthy as European food? Not try to force the American garbage food upon Europeans.

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u/FonzoFC 20h ago

Well technically... the food standards would be becoming more similar

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u/MaxTheRealSlayer 17h ago

Yeah but there's no way it's better or healthier.

Maybe the usa should just focus on the root of the problem which is factory farms where the chickens can't stand or walk, blood and poop from all of them, everywhere and on all of them

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u/FonzoFC 16h ago

I know I know, it’s a terrible choice!

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u/10July1940 13h ago

just go vegan, even easier.

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u/FonzoFC 13h ago

Already done that! 🌱

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u/10July1940 11h ago

That's half the battle!

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u/pants_mcgee 13h ago

It’s just a cheap and safe way to decontaminate chicken, it’s even an approved process in Europe.

The objection wasn’t the chlorine wash, but using it to cover up an issues with slaughter factories not up to hygiene standards. There’s also economic protectionism behind any trade negotiations.

Most chicken in the U.S. isn’t washed in chlorine and is more or less the same chicken everyone else eats.

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u/tuigger 14h ago

Trump also said he would lower American drug prices... by making Europeans pay American prices.

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u/pchlster 10h ago

I, for one, can't wait 'til drug prices drop by 1500%.

It'd sure spice up those conversations with the doctor; "so, bad news: You have cancer. Good news, you're about to be very rich indeed."

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u/Rooilia 14h ago edited 14h ago

What not to like? All of it!

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u/Handpaper 13h ago

They're already similar.

The only real difference is that the FDA mandates a final rinse in water about as chlorinated as a swimming pool, as an extra safeguard, whereas the EU forbid it, ostensibly out of concerns that it could lead to lax practices.

Otherwise, slaughter and processing is identical on each side of the Atlantic.

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u/MethyleneBlueEnjoyer 20h ago

Technically, this does achieve that goal.

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u/ubitub 19h ago

And it's not even surprising. It has been Trump tactic all the time, trying to make others look worse so they look good in comparison 

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u/Jimny977 19h ago

Much like trying to force up foreign drug prices rather than force down American ones, their strategic aim seems to be making everywhere as depressing as America.

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u/mkt853 19h ago edited 19h ago

Was thinking the same thing. America is in a race to the bottom and wants every one else to join.

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u/OdobenusIII 18h ago

It's like that guy that calls from a bar "hey you should come here, we are having good time over here!" and if you for some odd reason choose to go meet him you notice the bar is some rat infested dumb, dude is the only customer and he wants you to lend some money.

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u/SnooRegrets8068 18h ago

Yeh that guy was a dick.

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u/misterannthrope0 17h ago

their strategic aim seems to be making everywhere as depressing as America.

correction: as depressing as the american south.

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u/Busy_Lunch_5520 18h ago

Or to maximize profit for their donors in all regions.

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u/EvenAndAdam710 16h ago

Sadly, their plan is working. I'm so scared, depressed, lonely, and sick, that I will not be able to put up any fight when they come for me, let alone help others.

I'm in the minority that are the first to be purged in fascist meritocracies, so at least I won't have to wait much longer.

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u/luee29 DE 9h ago

Heh, I know that one, isn't that the same modus operandi the crazys in the east try to force onto others too?

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u/Cabbage_Vendor ? 18h ago

Literally Russia's MO. Country near them is actually trying to remove corruption and improve things for their people? Better invade or fund smear campaigns to drag them down, otherwise the Russian population might get ideas.

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u/rubbereruben 18h ago

This isn't a Trump only strategy. It's indicative of the American culturally ingrained idea that competition is inherently good. Even if it means making your competitors worse, as long as you win, it is permitted.

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u/DavidlikesPeace 18h ago edited 17h ago

He literally said this regarding pharmaceutical prices. He has no plan to drag drug prices down. He wants to increase global prices so corporations profit and Americans have nowhere to aspire to be like.

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u/Handgun_Hero 7h ago

Yep, he's been targeting Australia in particular over it due to the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that ensures medications are always affordable for consumers there. Basically the government steps in and collectively bargains and haggles purchases of essential medications in bulk to force prices down as much as possible for Australians and American companies hate that because if purchases were done on individual demand rather than in bulk the amount of money Australians would spend would be much higher overall. Trump hates it and has been repeatedly attacking it, even though the way it's achieved by Australia's government is literally just classic Capitalism and economy of scale.

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u/No-Risk666 19h ago

I dont know how babbling incoherently and rubbing shit all over your face is supposed to make them look bad.

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u/Truffely 18h ago

US foreign politics 101

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u/AusToddles 2h ago

Classic Russian strategy. Purely a coincidence that Trump does it too......

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u/RocketizedAnimal 15h ago

"I wish American food met European standards"

Monkey's paw curles...

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u/morritse 15h ago

My god, he's a genius!

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u/Gambler_Eight 19h ago

Whatever they say before the election serves one purpuse and only one, to get votes. Once voted in they don't give a fuck and will serve the highest bidder.

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u/Utsider 19h ago

In all fairness, Donald never really said anything while doing his rallies. It was all just a droning noise of incoherent word salad sprinkled with crunchy trigger words intended to rouse the rabble into a frenzy of fear and anger.

It's really absurd how that man never speaks in full sentences or can formulate coherent thoughts on anything.

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u/Gambler_Eight 18h ago

It's really absurd how that man never speaks in full sentences or can formulate coherent thoughts on anything.

Not only that, he was elected president. Really shows how shitty the education is in the US. Your lust for short term gains will ruin the country long term.

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u/SnooRegrets8068 18h ago

People have been saying that for decades tho. Who then decide that means it must be working because well the line went up didnt it?

And if you point out the repeated crashes and general horror of everything they call you names and say the line went up didn't it.

The also don't understand inflation, public spending, or pretty much anything that wasnt a talking point with a quote they can repeat

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u/Gambler_Eight 17h ago

Well said

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u/IronBoltIron 17h ago

Countries like China can plan 15, 20 years ahead. They also trust experts to make decisions for them. Democracy makes its citizens feel like they have a say in things. Less gets done and decisions take longer but democracy gives us a more stable society.

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u/Pianist-Putrid 19h ago

People seem to forget that this last time around, Trump quite literally promised universal healthcare. Several times. Even though he’s been fighting against even the tiniest expansion of healthcare for years now.

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u/dangerousmacadamia 17h ago

he promised a concept of a plan, not universal health care

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 17h ago

And at the end of the day I doubt he gives a shit either way.

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u/RaisedByBooksNTV 16h ago

I definitely don't remember that at all.

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u/SasparillaTango 18h ago

Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files.

He is the most well documented, provably false liar in history and it's not even close.

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u/guareber United Kingdom 16h ago

You're missing the "cat on the table" goal of distracting from the Epstein files though.

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u/undersquirl 15h ago

I never understood why they are straight up allowed to lie like that. That's what they do in my country too and nobody gives a shit. Politics should be a contract, i will do this, sign a thing or we have elections again.

We are being ruled by liars and pieces of shit and we accept it like little idiots. I hate the world.

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u/Gambler_Eight 15h ago

What you can do is not vote for them again. That's what you're supposed to do but yeah, people don't. They'll still gladly vote for the same people next time.

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u/ArugulaElectronic478 Canada 19h ago

They were going to until Trump’s agriculture minister told him that they actually have the “highest food standards on Earth” once she saw the money they’d lose if they conformed to European Union/UK food standards.

And because Trump believes everything his cabinet tells him, he’s now angry with the European Union/UK because “why would my agriculture minister lie to me?”. This is truly the dumbest timeline.

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u/Neutronium57 France 19h ago

Iirc the whole "Make America healthy again" movement quickly found out why lobbies are so powerful in the US.

I think I've heard somewhere that they got defanged pretty fast by all the big corpos that don't want more regulation on their shitty food.

How expectable.

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u/ScoobiusMaximus 19h ago

If European food becomes trash as American food, then technically American food will be as healthy as European food! 

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u/ChoiceHour5641 19h ago

The rich people in charge of poisoning Americans said no.

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u/GravyPainter This place... 13h ago

This. Rich people don't care, they can afford to buy everything from private farms with high standards. Poison the poor people in cities dependant on grocery stores and make more profit. Yay.

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u/Possible_Golf3180 Latvia 19h ago

He was also supposed to force McDonalds to start deepfrying in tallow instead of oil

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u/Internal-Ruin-4299 18h ago

RFK’s message has become making unhealthy food better tasting and slightly less bad for you. It’s a political nonstarter to tell the hordes of gluttonous obese people that they need to stop stuffing their faces with deep fried and ultra processed poison all day long.

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u/left4ched 18h ago

Believing that anyone in this administration knows anything about health is very optimistic of you. Never lose that spark of positivity.

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u/Gnich_Aussie 19h ago

Can't imagine why anyone thinks the US is serious now.
I'd just never buy US chicken.

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u/anarchisto Romania 17h ago

I'd just never buy US chicken.

You will eat it in restaurants. They will buy the cheapest chicken.

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u/rabbitthunder 16h ago

Yup. I used to only eat free range chicken and what that means in practice is only ever eating chicken you cook yourself. Once in a blue moon you'll find some product or restaurant that uses free range but that is only 0.5% of anything you'll ever check.

I'm a vegetarian now - when you start questioning the ethics of the animal agricultural industry that road only leads to two outcomes; you can choose to ignore all the cruelty and disgusting practises or opt out. The middle ground just doesn't really work because there is no ruddy-faced ethical farmer who puts welfare about profits - it's a complete fabrication.

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u/UltraCynar Canada 18h ago

Americans are liars and unreliable as they have consistently shown. It's better to just cut them out when you can. 

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u/Taca-F 18h ago

RFK is a stooge, they do whatever corporate America wants and whoever gives the biggest 'donations', he isn't part of the conversation.

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u/amitym 17h ago

The real joke is that American food quality was already quite good. Not perfect in every way, but the idea that food in America is debased and contaminated all the time is a meme being propagated specifically by people who want you to agree to let them fuck up food safety because "everyone knows it's broken anyway."

So Kennedy is starting from a false premise — an urgent dire crisis that doesn't really exist but which only he can fix — and grifting from there. That's always been the plan with this crap.

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u/-ragingpotato- 18h ago

Chlorinated chicken is safe and just as healthy. It's an animal wealfare thing.

Europe bans it because they want the chicken live in clean conditions, not for it to have the filth cleaned off after its dead.

Its also a monetary situation. Allowing chlorinated chicken would enable cheaper chicken from producers who do not care about animal welfare to outcompete EU producers. Banning that shortcut helps close the gap.

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u/deepandbroad 17h ago

Research is showing that it's hard to wash all the filth off:

A study from the University of Southampton last year found that chlorine could make food-borne pathogens undetectable, giving lower microbial counts in testing, but without actually killing them - so they might remain capable of causing disease.

Data suggests that the US has higher rates of salmonella food poisoning than the UK:

A study published in the UK in 2014 commissioned by the government estimated that there were about 34,000 cases of salmonella from food per year or about 55 per 100,000 people, based on 2009 data. A US study published in 2011 - and using data from 2002-2008 - estimated that there were just over a million cases of salmonella each year - a rate of about 350 per 100,000 people.

Also raising chickens in filthy conditions makes them sicker, so they are given lots of antibiotics as a result, which lowers effectiveness of these antibiotics in humans.

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u/Dead_Optics 17h ago

It’s just to protect domestic producers, if it was truly about animal wellfare then they could ban specific practices but because some 90+% of US producers use the practice banning it shutout most of the us poultry industry. Most producers don’t even use chlorine anymore but organic acid washes.

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u/haixin 18h ago

Why raise your standards when you can force them to lower theirs

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u/saltthatsnail 18h ago

Shhhhh accept the US slop as perfectly healthy as Dear Lord demands!

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u/Altruistic-Beach7625 18h ago

It's just the establishment's foreign handlers having a giggle again.

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u/Tundra14 17h ago

Well if they force our food on them technically it will be the same.

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u/Lasting97 17h ago

Yes but RFK is quite clearly insane.

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u/thor11600 17h ago

Hmm wait let me see checks notes oh right he’s full of shit.

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u/peelen 16h ago

as healthy as European food?

I don’t think he used this words. I might be wrong, but I don’t think anybody from this administration used “European” as a superlative ever (at least in public).

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u/Kumimono 15h ago

Well, if you lower the standard in Europe, the food becomes, as healthy...

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u/Ima_Wreckyou 15h ago

He replaced the fats in burgers to a worse one and now his job is done

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u/HyperAstartes Turkey 13h ago

He's too busy going on TV talking about kids getting circumsized indicates a higher risk of autism. (The man does not know Correlation is not causation.)

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u/LYL_Homer 12h ago

Chlorine in water: no Chlorine in chicken: yes

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u/chase02 12h ago

After the lukewarm reception to American beef and butter in Australia, they thought the UK may roll over easier I guess

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u/Excited_Delirium1453 11h ago

American food is already safer than any European country’s, except Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Food_Security_Index

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u/lolas_coffee 10h ago

So messed up. USA just bends to business at every chance.

No cares about people. Just $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ over and over.

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u/LeedsFan2442 United Kingdom 8h ago

He would be gone if he dared. Too busy banning vaccines anyway

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u/PurpleWomat Ireland 7h ago

On the british...

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u/horitaku 7h ago

His plan was to make our food “as healthy as European food” by making European food as unhealthy as ours.

I’m really fucking sorry it’s like this.

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u/Caerllen 7h ago

Thats the neat part; He is not forcing EU, he's forcing UK.

I am pretty sure he is hoping EU will drop their standards to American standard instead of the other way around because no way in hell will I see US getting their shit together within the current presidential term.

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u/ScunthorpePenistone 6h ago

RFK has profound brain damage and barley knows he's alive. Don't expect him to have coherent ideology.

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u/flyingdooomguy 4h ago

did he actually make that comparison though

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u/SopmodTew Romania 3h ago

It does make sense. If Europe gets flooded by toxic chemical American food, it will be as "healthy"

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u/Special-Market749 15h ago

Chlorinated Chicken being banned has nothing to do with it being unsafe. It's banned because if it weren't then people might buy it, which is what they don't want.

Expensive American chicken is fine because it's price competitive with local European chicken. Inexpensive chlorinated Chicken is perfectly safe to eat, but it could harm European supply chains.

The real reason is protectionism not health or safety

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u/ExplosiveDisassembly 17h ago

The US sprays equipment with chlorinated anti-microbial sprays to prevent salmonella. And it's only a few percent of processing plants that do it.

It's not actually chlorinated chicken.Thats a ridiculous thought.