Our standards for poultry in the USA... is an embarrassment....

[HennysMom]

bacquacil and bioguard for swimming pools are non-chlorinated options ...I wonder why they cant use this on birds vs. chlorine?

hubby is on the phone and says sodium hypochloride (liquid bleach - look on your Clorox bleach bottles) is what is used to disinfect drinking water in the US in the majority of the places. EPA sets the standard and the health dept enforces it. Hubby deals with DEQ (Dept of Env. Quality) each and every day and is Director of Operations for a very large Water and Wastewater plant. He says if we go onto EPA's website it will have all the contaminents in water and what treatment methods that are used.

(my brian hurts when he starts talking water/wastewater jargon... LOL - there are alot of acroynms and whatnot in there - trust me...I opened a can of worms here!)

He is great at what he does though.


I cannot drink City Water... at all. The chlorine levels (which they raise in the winter) makes my stomach turn and doesnt agree with me. I must drink bottled water (Deer Park) or use a very very good filter to filter out the city water. Where we live now we have well water and wow- what a HUGE difference that is. I still filter it though...


SO - my next question is what in the world is the "sodium solution" they inject grocery store chickens with to "make them more juicy"?

I believe this is where my aversion to chicken is coming from...I cannot eat chicken any longer - it is wayyyyyyyy too salty and nasty tasting. WHY do they have to change things and add things?!

 

[Brunty_Farms]

I see, that is good to know. There was a ton of chemicals that I saw that were used to treat water for drinking. It said it depended on weather it was surface water...ect.

So It still is two totally different chemicals used. Did your Husband know of sodium hypochlorite?


UGH......bored and tired of pacing the house. I can't wait until Spring, thank god for BYC Lol.

 

[the1much]

does this mean we shouldnt drink the pool water

 

[HennysMom]

Brunty - yes, my husband knows all about water and wastewater - its his job

. Like I said, I opened a can of worms when I read this entire post to him over the phone (he's on his way home)

and I got lots and lots of water/wastewater jaron and acronyms

Some of it I understand ...but most of it... HA! I just nod and agree and go "Oh yeah? Hmmm... Interesting"

1much - ewww...I have a sign up that says "I dont swim in your potty so dont pee in my pool"

Of course, Hubby also tells all the little ones that get into our pool that he put a special chemical in it that will turn purple around the person if they even THINK about peeing in our pool! LOL They all look at us and then at our kids and the kids just nod vigorously. When asked (out of our ear shot, or so they think..

) if its true - the kids reply "We dont know..we've never peed in the pool - I dont want a purple cloud around ME!"

HA HA HA!

 

[Brunty_Farms]

I think pool water is good for you bladder.... I bet it would clean you out!! It seems to clean everything else

 

[the1much]

i bet chicken would taste better,,, closer to what mine taste like,, without the stuff,, but then we'de be dying from bad food at the store

" Welcome to our ool
as you see, there is no "P"
in our ool,,,, keep it that way

"

 

[Bossroo]

There are way too many looney toons out there filing frivolous law suits by ambulance chacing lawyers , then the politicians get invalved and pass way too many laws and we all have to bare the brunt of them. Example: We had a pretty good water leak from a pipe in the wall of the house. Filed HO claim. insurance company gets a mold remiadiation company to place fans in the house after they rip out the carpets and remove the base boards on the walls. This exposes the "mold" to the air and when the fans blow over this mold , it blows the spores all over the house. This goes on for two weeks, untill the sheet rock is now dry. They then put up a plastic tent up over the LR, K, and Bathroom. They staple it down every 2 inches in the ceilings and walls,and tape it down at the floors with brown tape total area covered is 8 x 10feet and a zipper for a door. They put up signs, DANGER hazardous molds, DO NOT ENTER . Insurance Co. specifies for hazmat suits, rubber gloves, masks, and googles for all workers and nothing for me or my family. The workers from the remediation co. go into the containment tent to remove the contaminated sheetrock, insulation , and OSB and use a HEPA vacuum to vacuum up any debris, then spray a mold killing chemical solution. They wear no hazmat suit, no rubber gloves, no mask and no goggles... only their regular street clothes. Then they put 2 huge air purification fans on in this tented area ( air intake fan blades, filter, then an air exit at the bottom) full force. I go upstairs and about 15 minutes later I feel a draft. The force of the 2 fans going full force pulled up the taped down tent at the floor, sending all of the "Contaminated MOLD" throughout the house. That is OK according to the manager of this remediation company because they had sprayed the area with mold killing chemicals. The air sampling technition with ESA,CRMI 200 &300 CASI HHCI IAQA AIAOC AIHA IHS MTCI CASI FLIR Certified Thermographer comes to take air samples. He goes into this contamination containment tent in his street clothes, no hazmat suit, no rubber gloves, no mask and takes samples. The samples don't pass the lab tests. Same disregard to protocal by second set of workers. more tests same disregard for protocal by this tester. This time it passes. I file my consers and am dismissed. My insurance co. and I get a bill for $7, 890 from the remediation co. and $1495 from the technition. Upon removing this tent, I found sheetrock knife slices floor to ceiling and all around the entire perimeter along the ceilings of this tent when they cut the plastic sheets at instalation. This fiasco takes up another 2 weeks to accomplish. Then they tell me that I am responsible for the repairs of the sliced sheetrock and staples. Now, if any one of the workers get sick from the "MOLD" who do you think will be named in a lawsuit? What helpful service was rendered other than lightening my wallet ??? My Mother would have used a cup of Clorox in a bucket of water and a sponge to scrub down the area within an hour... end of problem . The insurance cos. are so afraid of law suits that they will not allow no worker to enter the area untill they get a clearance certificate first from the very same legalized rip off artists in charge of clearing out any "hazards" that may affect a worker. What about me, my family or even my friends? I guess that we don't matter.

 

[dancingbear]

We have a cistern here, county water isn't available yet. We hauled water from a pump station in our little town, until it broke down and the owner decided not to bother fixing it anymore. Then we got water (at a much higher cost) delivered from a local guy. It was sometimes from his spring, we never got sick from it, and it tasted great. We got used to little or no chlorine in our water.

Now we have a rain water collection system we recently added. We don't drink that water, as it's from the roof, all manner of contaminants, but we use it for animals, laundry, bathing, and we chlorinate it so nobody gets sick, and it doesn't get nasty and stagnant in the cistern. We use calcium hypochlorite, as that was what I found recommended on USDA website for disinfecting water cisterns. The animals, including the chickens, have open pans or buckets for water, so the chlorine evaporates fairly quickly. Perhaps at some point we can install an ozonation system, but this is what we have for the time being.

We now haul our drinking water in a small 30 gallon tank, from Elizabethtown. My DH gets it on his way home from work, when we need it. We fill 5-gallon jugs to use with a water dispenser in the kitchen.

We can't drink that city water, straight from the tank. The chlorine makes us sick. It smells like bleach. We have to leave the lid off of the 30-gal. tank for several days, to let the chlorine evaporate, before we fill the jugs. Even then, there's enough chlorine left that we usually put it through a Brita filter before we drink it. When I go visit friends in town, I take filtered water with me to drink, because the tap water turns my stomach.

Brunty Farms, you said "Successful trials, including several at the University of Georgia, have shown that electrolyzed water is highly effective at killing food-borne bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria, without affecting the quality of the food."

Do you know what they mean by electrolyzed water? Are they talking about adding electrolytes, (sodium, potassium, CO2) or something else? If they're talking about electrolytes, it seems to me that would be an excellent, safe, cost effective alternative to using chlorine. At least electrolytes are actually something our bodies use anyway. It may or may not be as cheap as chlorine, but on a cost-per-bird basis, I bet it's do-able.

One of the real issues with chlorinated vs. non-chlorinated chicken, is the problem of poor sanitation that make it necessary to disinfect the chicken in the first place. We've never had to disinfect any meat we've butchered at home, chicken, turkey, or deer. We've never gotten sick from any of it. I prefer my food, like my water, without chemical disinfectants. Apparently, so do most countries other than the US.

The US is often presumed to set an example of food and product quality and safety. Sadly, we really don't. The crap that is allowed in our food supplies is alarming.

 

[HennysMom]

so do those of you that process your own birds sanitize them with a bleach solution too?

Wow - that just doesnt make any sense to me at all - no matter who does it.

I mean - we wouldnt rinse off our veggies and fruit with a bleach mixture..right? So why do it with our meat?

I know chickens are "dirty" so to speak, but... what about washing them down with an acidifier or something - acid kills bacteria. Lemon pepper chicken... - two for one deal there! Kill the bacteria and flavor the bird all at once

No seriously... I wonder why that isnt being used? Anyone?? (looks around)

We make non-chemical cleaners/sanitizers right? So how come we cant make a non-chemical thing to kill bacteria on a bird? How about UV light - would that do it? It kills bacteria in water....CA has this practice in most of their water/wastewater plants as do many others across the US. Cant we do the same with chickens?

So many questions.....and no one to answer them

 

[dancingbear]

Henny's Mom, like I said in a post above, we've never disinfected any meat we've butchered at home. It's not needed, if you follow safe butchering practices, and don't contaminate your meat while you process it. Keep table surfaces clean, scrub off your birds with clean water after they're plucked, be careful with gutting/evisceration so you don't expose meat or knives/tools to fecal contamination. If you don't feel you can do this properly, or don't trust your own handling, you can disinfect with vinegar, if you think you need to, then rinse with clean water.

In addition to this, I cook the meat, anyway. I'm not eating it raw or rare. If I did eat red meat rare, (which I don't) the venison we've butchered at home is probably a lot safer than meat from the supermarket.

Thorough cooking will generally destroy pathogens, but not necessarily chemical contaminants.
I would never bleach my food.