Blog: Chlorine rinsed chickens – is there a better way?

Ensuring the food we eat is safe and fit for purpose is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. The rapid growth of populations and demand for meat means chickens are being intensively reared and the most recent ‘food scare’ was the revelation that chlorine-rinsed chickens from the US might make it to UK shelves.

Now, as most media have pointed out, the fact the chickens are rinsed in chlorine isn’t necessarily a risk to one’s health, but part of a wider problem of poor standards, hygiene and bacteria growth in intensive farming.

Bacteria grows and spreads rapidly in environments where animals are in close contact and in enclosed barns – so farmers are under pressure to ensure bacteria isn’t on the meat when it makes its way to consumers – and the same for processing plants. Let’s not pretend this is a problem confined only to the US or chicken farms. Farms intensively rearing animals in many different countries face the problem of bacteria and the spread of disease and they need ways to control it – which currently means chemicals.

Ultimately using chemicals to kill bacteria helps to reduce cases of Salmonella and Campylobacter, and that is clearly important.

However, dumping lots of chemicals into the environment to control this problem isn’t a long-term, nor sustainable solution.

Aqua21’s approach to farming, agriculture and disinfection is very different. With ozonation treatment, we can leave residual ozone in the water to make that water biocidal (ie it kills bacteria on contact) – this needs no chemicals and the ozone disappears shortly after use, leaving nothing but clean water behind.

You might think this is a costly technology that would need huge investment. But our technology enables water to be tested and treated at point of use on a smaller scale – we have miniaturised the technology and made it much more affordable than it ever has been – meaning ozonation as a disinfection treatment could become a real possibility for farming.

Cleaning out farms or rinsing meat with ozonated, biocidal water, could be a way to reduce bacteria in a way that is palatable to consumers – essentially it is just being washed with water, therefore no harmful chemicals are left behind. Aqua21 is looking to work with an industry partner to trial this ground-breaking technology. Please get in touch via the contact form.