Last September, the USDA agreed to let chicken processing plants in China process American-raised chickens, then ship the chickens back to the USA to be sold to consumers.
In November 2013, the USDA announced that it was planning to approve importing Chinese-raised and slaughtered poultry too.
Well, another year has passed, and the USDA has indeed given the green light to China to begin selling Chinese-raised fresh and frozen chickens in the United States. From the New York Times:
The Department of Agriculture will allow Chinese poultry processing companies to ship fully cooked, frozen and refrigerated chicken to the United States.
Food safety advocates have been predicting the announcement since the department last year approved the export of chicken raised in the United States to be processed in China….
School lunch advocates have been especially worried about Chinese chicken potentially ending up on trays. Nancy Huehnergarth, a nutrition policy consultant, has noted that processed chicken does not require country of origin labeling and predicted that it would end up in chicken nuggets and chicken soup.
According to the Congressional Research Service, China has wanted its chicken to be accepted as a quid pro quo for lifting a ban it imposed on United States beef products in 2003 after a cow in Washington state was found to have mad cow disease.
This article from TakePart.com has more information:
It took a little more than a year, but the fears of many food safety experts and xenophobes have come to pass: You may soon be eating chicken that was raised and slaughtered in China.
Last year, the USDA quietly announced (on the Friday before a holiday weekend) that it would allow imports of chicken that was processed in China but had been killed elsewhere—say in the U.S. or Canada. While federal officials would oversee the slaughter, no USDA inspectors would be present when the birds were processed in the four approved Chinese facilities.
It was indeed the first step: The USDA will now allow processed, refrigerated, and frozen Chinese poultry to be sold in the United States. And food safety advocates are furious.
“There have been scores of food safety scandals in China, and the most recent ones have involved expired poultry products sold to U.S. fast-food restaurants based in China,” Wenonah Hauter, Food and Water Watch executive director, said in a statement. “Now, we have FSIS moving forward to implement this ill-conceived decision, and it has not even audited the Chinese food safety system in over 20 months, in direct contradiction to what it promised it would do to protect U.S. consumers.”
Thanks to reader Russ for bringing this story to my attention.
