The European Union Commission is considering lifting the ban on US poultry treated with antimicrobial substances, a move that is opposed by European consumers organizations, the European poultry industry, farmers unions and environmental and health NGOs. It is not the first time European constituents are expressing concerns over US agricultural products (GMOs are at the center of a much heated debate at the moment while growth hormones are banned). It is very tempting to accuse them of protectionism, a political game EU members seem to have perfected hiding behind consumer safety or even cultural exception. Yeah, that would be easy. But again, can we seriously blame them to be worried about their health and safety.

What health, what safety? Don’t we comply with the highest hygiene standards? Aren’t we the largest users per capita of antimicrobial products in the world? Shouldn’t we take every precautionary measure to prevent a pandemic like the Avian flu? Precisely, “precautionary” is applied differently whether you are blind focused on the direct risks of being exposed to pathogens or you are dead scared obsessed by the amount of antimicrobial synthetic chemicals and antibiotics we use to reduce the risks of cross-contamination.

Agreeing on the necessity to take action

The US meat and poultry industry has adopted a procedure rightly called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), which was designed and is enforced by the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture in 2001. The system identifies potential food safety hazard during the food production and preparation processes. It asks farms and food processors to design and implement preventive actions to eliminate the risks of passing to the consumer meat and poultry contaminated by pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter, two bacteria that (usually) live happily in chickens’ intestines. Around the same time, the European commission proposed a new set of safety hygiene rules called … HACCP, which was later renamed the Zoonosis regulation (ECZR) of 2003. While agreeing sanitary measures needed to be taken “from farm to fork”, US and EU food industry differed on the practical means to ensure good hygiene standards are met for reasons that are political and economical and philosophical in nature.

For one, the regulatory body in Europe is the Commission of Health and Consumers, which has jurisdiction over all sectors of the food chain, including feed production, primary production, food processing, storage, transport and retail sale. Although I am prone to criticize European institutions for the bureaucracy and headaches they tend to generate, I have to admit a centralized regulatory body overseeing everything that comes directly or indirectly in contact with a human being makes sense. Another philosophical difference is the legal environment in which these regulations are promulgated (the old foe between the mandatory and voluntary principles has turned to the advantage of the former in the EU, while it is clearly to the latter in the US) which can be an advantage (uniformity) or a disadvantage (competition). While EU member states have a relative freedom on how to implement these directives (cultural difference oblige), they are expected to facilitate and enforce them.

Defining “Safe”

But the most significant difference stems in the new EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which started a profound reform switching quite radically from a focus on quantity to one on quality, hoping to better manage crop yields – as to avoid surplus, preserve local agriculture and reduce the subsidies related tax burden. The new CAP had to take into account a set of rules reflecting EU members’ health, safety and environmental concerns. Center to this policy is the precautionary principle or “prevention is better than cure” – (see REACH and RoHS), which has required food businesses to adopt different processes than their US counterparts, generating extra costs in the form of investments to meet these regulations, especially during the slaughtering stage and the processing of table eggs. For instance, the EU has not approved any chemicals for decontamination of fresh meat (see Regulation No 853/2004), which means that European farmers and food processors can’t use chlorine to wash chicken during the chilling process. Instead, the EU Commission for Health and Consumers has designed a very thorough directive of safety standards and a long list of detailed good practices farmers, food processors and food retailers have to comply to (such as phasing out antibiotics used as well in human). EU member states are to implement strict monitoring programs – which can be slightly different from one country to another – where flocks of chicken and eggs are regularly tested for Salmonella and other pathogenic bacteria at every level of the food chain. If contaminated, the production is usually disregarded and the facility has to undergo strict remediation. But what seems to make a real difference in the prevention of outbreak is the slaughtering environment, which is literally sealed from any other farming or food processing activities (Vs. chain production/ processing). Digestive organs are separated manually (Vs. mechanical processing). The most common (and recommended) disinfecting method is steamed/ hot water (>180º) instead of applying antimicrobial substances.

Now, the question everyone wants to know is … which one – if any – works?

If you ask the US Poultry industry (National Chicken Council, USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, National Turkey Federation) you’ll hear: “By any measure, our poultry is safe and wholesome.” Not according to a report by the Consumer Reports, there is 83% chance the fresh whole broiler you just bought at a US retailer harbors Salmonella or/and campylobacter. And here is the dirty secret: it seems there is no difference between an organic fed, raised without antibiotics and a fully industrialized chicken.
The CR report notes that “that the rate of positive salmonella tests in broilers had jumped to 16.3 percent in 2005, up from 11.5 percent in 2002”. It points “holes in the safety net” both in the monitoring of chicken production and in the remediation of contamination. Over 100 processing plants have failed the federal Salmonella test standard at least once between 1998 and 2005.

In Europe, the EU Consumers Bureau notes that “The effectiveness of the European approach based on the EC Zoonosis Regulation is e.g. demonstrated by the decrease in figures for the presence of the most health relevant Salmonella types in parent-breeding flocks for laying hen production. The running control programmes. in accordance with the Zoonosis Directive 2003/99/EC, 2004-2006, indicate that, in these flocks, the prevalence of these Salmonella types decreased from 6.9% in 2004 to 2.2% in 2006. In addition, it is mentioned that 14 Member States did not have any case of these most health relevant Salmonella types in 2006 while in 2004 this was the case for only 3 Member States. Considerable decreases were observed in the Czech Republic (from 33.3% of positives samples in 2004 to 0% in 2006), Greece (from 14.5% in 2005 to 0 in 2006) and Denmark (11.1% in 2004 to 0% in 2006).

A week ago, EU vet experts overwhelmingly voted against the Commission plans, following the EU Consumers Bureau’s rational. They argued that there was not enough scientific evidence to suggest the use of antimicrobial products were safe for human consumption and the warn that such measures would undermine EU’s poultry industry efforts to contained pathogenic bacteria. The proposition is now being reviewed by the member states’ agricultural ministers.

Rights to know

I could not close this post without writing about another important aspect of the EU’s policy in regards to consumers’ rights. The EU’s Food Labeling rules state that is that consumers should be given all essential information on the composition of the product, the manufacturer, methods of storage and preparation, which the new proposition included in its provisions: “The businesses using the substances would also have to let consumers know, through labelling, that the poultry has been treated by one of these substances – they would have to label in a clearly legible way that the poultry has either been “treated with antimicrobial substances” or “decontaminated by chemicals.” Strict conditions for the management of waste water are also provided for in order to ensure the protection of the environment (…). This is of course another point of friction with the US. Would you buy a chicken that is labeled “chlorinated chicken”?

A small detail … if the proposition passes, the United States will be allowed to ship to the European Union about $50 million worth of poultry annually. In return, the United States will (re)open its market to European Union poultry, which amounts to only about $1 million a year. The US poultry aren’t likely to reach European’s table anytime soon because of the lack of demand. The UK has offered to be the main channel for this unwanted chicken that will most likely end up on the plate of its military troops according to a UK newspaper.

Finally, if you want to buy a farm raised, antibiotic free, cage free broiler in France, it’ll cost you around $4.50 per pound (<3 euros).

Sources:
European Union – Commission on Food and Safety:
Zoon Report 2006
Directives # 852 & 853/2004 & 2160/2003
Copa-Cogeca

http://www.fwi.co.uk

BEUC (www.beuc.eu)
USDA
FDA
US Poultry Industry
Texas T&M
UC Davis
University of Georgia

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