Several Facebook photos of chicken on the shelves of a grocery store allegedly show evidence of lice on raw chicken thighs. However, this is false. Several experts in the food industry have confirmed to Reuters that the marks seen in the images are harmless blood stains.
The photos have been shared 460,000 times since it was uploaded on February 19 with the caption: “Good evening people. Just got back from Walmart Drayton Valley. Saw this chicken and because I raised chickens in the past, I just had to share it with everyone. Do you see the red marks on the skin on these chicken thighs? Guess where it came from? These are sores from LICE! Good old premium Maple Leaf not only raises their chicken with lice, but markets it too! And none other than Wal mart makes it all possible for those immoral BASTARDS! Where does this world come from ?! ”(Here).
There is no evidence to support this claim – and experts have confirmed to Reuters that the marks are blood stains that occur as a harmless result of air conditioning.
“Our food safety team carefully reviewed the photo and accompanying information,” said Janet Riley, a spokeswoman for Maple Leaf Foods, the company responsible for the products on the Facebook photos (www.mapleleaffoods.com/, twitter.com/queenofwien). She told Reuters in an email: ‘We are confident that the red spots on the chicken thighs in the photo shared on social media are common and harmless bloodstains or meat particles that can be transmitted to the chicken during the processing of the chicken, or slight color differences. These chicken products are safe, healthy and inspected by the government, claiming that there are lice is simply untrue. ”
Lisa Bishop-Spencer, a spokeswoman for Chicken Farmers of Canada, an organization responsible for 2,800 farmers who raise chickens for meat (www.chickenfarmers.ca/), also told Reuters: “We are well aware of the FB mail – as you can understand, this has garnered a strong response from the consumer, which is frustrating as the progress through the mail is untrue. ”
Bishop-Spencer explained that the meat shown in the images is of broilers, a specific species that differs from low-lying chickens that produce table eggs. She said Dr Christine Power, the director of animal care and sustainability at Chicken Farmers of Canada (here), also confirmed that the images do not show lice bites.
Lice are not a known problem in broilers, as there is no chance of an infection taking a broiler, it is a closed facility that is cleaned after each herd. Lice markings would not be as large as those shown in the images and would not occur in mid-winter in a Canadian chicken farm, Bishop-Spencer added.
Both Maple Leaf Foods and Chicken Farmers of Canada said the red marks are a harmless product of air conditioning, a process that can increase the appearance of imperfections and blood stains. Riley said the packaging presses directly on the raw chicken while the products are stacked on top of each other, which can further increase “imperfections such as blood stains and imperfections of the skin”.
Chicken Farmers of Canada confirmed Riley’s comments, explaining that air conditioning is “one of two ways processors cool the chicken to comply with food safety guidelines. The other is water chill. Air cooling means that the chicken inflates cold air, instead of cooling, where the chicken is immersed in cold water while being cut into pieces or otherwise processed. ”
Maple Leaf Foods said the product shown in the images is distributed throughout Canada and is inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA – here), which has inspectors at the processing plant at all times.
“CFIA inspectors inspect every load of live chickens that arrive to ensure that they are healthy before they are processed and processed on the spot. “This product bears the hallmark of CFIA inspection, which indicates that it complies with Canadian food safety regulations,” Riley said.
Reuters contacted CFIA by email and confirmed that he had not received any complaints about the chicken appearing in the images. Canadian food safety rules are available here and consumers can submit any concerns about food they buy in Canada to CFIA.
VERDICT
Untrue. The Facebook images show harmful blood stains on raw chicken, not lice.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.