An article published in a special edition of Japanese weekly Shukan Bunshu has suggested that  potentially hazardous chicken sourced from China may be finding its way into fast food in Japan. The article, composed by writer Shuuji Okuno, begins by posing the following question:

“Would you still be willing to put a chicken nugget in your mouth if you knew the real story? The hazards of China’s domestic chicken meat!”

Our attention well and truly grabbed, we delved inside.

The paper reveals that in January this year the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper Beijing Youth Daily ran a shocking news article that exposed the state of China’s food problem:

“Reports on the net suggest that a food manufacturer in Hanan is using birds in its manufacturing process that have died due to disease. The use of diseased birds has been going on for some time and the same processed birds are being sold to a famous fast-food retailers.”

Needless to say that when first published, the news created widespread panic among the citizens of China since the famous fast food retailers that the article is referring to are none other than McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). It doesn’t stop just at China but also has implications for the Japanese chains of the same fast food retailers. Japan’s Sankei News, upon carrying out its own investigation, discovered that some of the chicken used by McDonald’s Japan is the same as the meat from the food manufacturer in Hanan, China. Perhaps even more alarming is that in 2011, 222,000 tons of chicken was imported into Japan from China.

The most evident problem relating to China’s poultry is the large amounts of growth hormones and antibiotics they are given to speed up the process, with reports also suggesting that some birds are kept in poultry houses completely void of light, with up to 100 birds crammed into spaces originally designed for the raising of 40. Taking all this into account, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine how disease could quickly spread from bird to bird.

Fifteen years ago, China saw the spread of the E.coli bacteria. As a result of the uncontrolled use of antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread like never before. As of now there are about a hundred different types of bacteria recorded, with the 078 strain being one of the most virulent. When antibiotics fail to work, there is obviously a significant increase in the number of infected birds that die.

Sankei’s report goes on to suggest that much of the corn fed to these birds may also be contaminated with organochlorine, a chemical that is known for causing cancer and affecting the nervous system. When fed to poultry, the concentration of organochlorine in this corn is said to increase ten fold.

McDonald’s Japan has responded to fears regarding the most recent contamination problem in writing. However as of yet, the fast food chain has been rather hesitant in elaborating too much on the issues at hand.

Source: Sankei News