Donald Trump has told Sir Keir Starmer that Britain must start selling chlorinated US chickens if it wants lower tariffs.
The US president has called for the concession after imposing a 10pc levy on goods from the UK to America, claiming that the UK’s restrictions on chlorine-washed poultry and hormone-treated beef were flawed.
After announcing a barrage of sweeping global tariffs on Wednesday, the White House released a statement saying: “The UK maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict US exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products.”
This formed part of Mr Trump’s narrative that America has been subject to unfair treatment from countries around the world, including the UK.
It listed Britain’s ban on chlorinated chicken among a range of “non-tariff barriers” that limit America’s ability to trade.
When asked about American meat-processing practices last year, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, said: “We’re not going to allow British farmers to be undercut by different rules and regulations in other countries.
“We opposed [allowing the imports] in the last parliament, and that won’t change.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/03/buy-us-chlorine-washed-chicken-if-you-want-lower-tariffs/
Posted by TheTelegraph
28 comments
Trump can stick his swimming pool chicken up his saggy old arse
Just label them and nobody will buy it anyway.
Unsurprisingly Nasty Nige is all for us eating bleach chicken because Daddy Trump said so
Trump is a wanker.
A chicken in every pot, and a cap in every ass.
And there it is.
He’s trying to bully us into accepting shite American food with its shite welfare standards and its shite additives.
It’ll be US health care and drug companies getting deeper hooks into the NHS next.
He should be told to fuck off and the world needs to find a way of getting on with things while the US sits in the corner and shits itself for the next 4 years rather than capitulating. If they want to isolate themselves, then let them.
The science is clear.
Chlorinating chicken allows lazy, cruel, profit-driven farmers to treat their animals like crap. They paddle around in puddles of their own detritus for their entire life, then need to be literally bleached to make them safe to eat.
Nobody here is going to eat that shit.
Here’s an idea. Fuck off.
I’m so fucking done with America, fuck em.
If you have to call them “safe, high-quality beef and poultry products”, then you know they’re neither safe nor high quality.
So where was that person yesterday shouting me down that the US did not want to force chlorinated chicken, NHS outsourcing and all that other crap the US has been saying for 15 years?
It was a “small simple trade deal”… my ass!
Our food standards are not for negotiating.
We have chicken at home
Did you ever see the documentary on the chicken factory processes in the USA? Chicken all over the floor, no hygiene, assumption that the clorination would “clean it up”, I will definitely not buy it, and cease to have chicken in takeaway’s if I suspect they buy it.
American food is well known for being horrible. Ever tried American “chocolate”? It’s like eating brown wax.
Trump can try to coerce governments into making deals, but he can’t force consumers into buying low grade American food. It’ll all rot on the shelves.
Did a bit of reading, and it turns out the chlorine itself isn’t the problem. The levels are low to the point of being irrelevant to human health. Rather it’s that the chlorine is only necessary because the chickens are farmed and slaughtered in unsanitary conditions, because it’s cheaper to do that and then spray them with chlorine afterwards than it is to keep things clean in the first place.
Also, this chlorine treatment has been shown to be questionably effective, with mixed results in different studies.
Yeah, maybe pass.
If that was the only option for chicken on the shelves, I wouldn’t buy it. I’m already moving more to British pork instead of chicken and beef anyway, it’s nicer and cheaper.
Tell Trump to get fucked.
Salad in the EU gets the chlorine rinse, it’s a bit hypocritical. That said, as others have pointed out, it’s the manky conditions the chickens are housed and slaughtered in that necessitates it which is the bigger problem.
Lol I remember the rhetoric during Brexit. “Special relationship” “easy free trade deal” “no concessions on our food standards”.
Turns out there’s no special relationship, no free trade deal and we’ll end up dropping our food standards to appease trump and get slightly lower tarrifs than everyone else.
The next step in the Brexit dream is unfolding…becoming America’s little bitch.
“pc” as an abbreviation for % is wild
So the choice is either we eat chlorinated chicken (that I’m fairly certain we don’t even need – I’ve never known poultry availability to be an issue), or the Americans can pay a 10% tax?
Real difficult choice Don, but I think we’ll take “watch the yanks screw themselves over”, thanks. Meanwhile, keep a hold of your chickens and see if you can get the price of eggs down a bit.
And is beautiful hormone packed beef!
Who wants to eat that muck?
Starmer lowering our food safety standards to appease Trump will be the final, definitive proof that he’s no better than the Tories or Reform.
Watch this space.
Lmao NO, I’d rather suffer a recession depression than be forced to take US’s chlorinated chicken, DON’T BACK DOWN UK
Don’t buy the stuff. Worked in the food industry for a few years. There’s a very good reason why we don’t have to eat chlorinated chicken and they do. It’s called food hygiene standards. I can’t imagine they export their highest quality either.
“Get fucked,” Britain tells Trump.
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