United Poultry Concerns Urges You To
Urge Beverly Hassell to Drop Nuggets For Good!
Urge Your Local School District and State Board of Education
to Drop Nuggets For Good!
Responding to the recent news that chicken nuggets fed to school
children contain wounded skin, sores, bruises, and pus,
several school districts in Oregon have declared a moratorium on
serving chicken nuggets as part of their school lunch program.
The serving of nuggets was temporarily suspended when federal food-safety inspectors announced,
earlier this month, that one of the country's largest chicken
slaughtering companies, Gold Kist, has been marketing nuggets
made out of birds slaughtered with sores, scabs, and infections
mixed into the nuggets.
Beverly Hassell is the commodities specialist at the Child Nutrition Program, Oregon Department
of Education, and she is responsible for distributing the diseased nuggets to the schools.
Talking Points:
- Chicken nuggets contribute to the increasing health problems,
including high cholesterol, that are being documented in American
school children.
- A chicken nugget is made of reconstituted chicken parts, grease,
polyphosphates, and other chemical agents needed to hold the
product together. A chicken nugget has very low nutritional value
while being high in saturated fat and cholesterol.
- The recent incident with the Gold Kist poultry company is not
isolated, rare, or remediable. As US Department of Agriculture
overseer of food-safety inspection, John McCutchen, told the
press regarding the Gold Kist episode: Even with 100 percent
inspection, infected, bruised, injured birds would go into the
food chain. Infected and injured body parts regularly go into
products in which they are disguised--chicken patties, sausages,
nuggets, and "buffalo" wings.
- Ten years ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that
every week "chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces,
contaminated by harmful bacteria, marred by lung and heart
infections, cancerous tumors or skin conditions are shipped to
consumers." USDA Inspector Ronnie Sarratt told the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution that wings, legs, and other parts of birds
leaking pus regularly go into chicken breast fillets, buffalo
wings, and chicken products fried in grease and coated with
barbecue sauce. School lunch programs, like all other
institutional food service programs, are dumping ground for such
products.
- A wholesome and nutritious lunch program should be based on
whole grains, nuts, leafy greens, fresh fruits, fruit juices, and
soy products. The US government's own studies have confirmed that
these are the kinds of foods children and adults should be eating
to stay healthy and to reduce the risk of clogged arteries,
diabetes, obesity, and foodborne illness (which can lead to
arthritis).
United Poultry Concerns. February 15, 2000
United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405-0150
757-678-7875
FAX: 757-678-5070
www.upc-online.org
(Action Alert - Urge School Lunch to Nix Nuggets Forever!)
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