If you only have 15 minutes to spare this weekend, you must watch the video reportage from The Guardian on poultry factories. Under the heading Revealed: the dirty secret of the UK's poultry industry, it shows disgusting scenes from chicken factories and suggests that two thirds of chickens sold in the UK are contaminated with campylobacter. The report suggests that although the bug is killed by thorough cooking, around 280,000 people in the UK are currently made ill each year by it and 100 people die. It suggests that the contamination rates are known to have increased in the past decade. My perspective of food changed completely after I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. It is since that summer of 2001 that I have never set foot again in a fast food chain. That book had a deep impact on how I viewed food. This new reportage in the Guardian just goes to prove that many years down the line, nothing has improved There are a few lessons to learn from this reportage. 1. … [Read more...]