USDA Approves US-Raised Chickens to be Processed in China

It seems that barely a month goes by without some horrifying report of food adulteration in China, such as deadly melamine in milk powder which sickened over 300,000 children, high-levels of mercury in baby formula, Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in China learning that their Chinese poultry supplier had fattened their chickens with large quantities of toxic chemicals, rat meat sold as lamb, and chemically-enhanced 46 year old chicken feet being sold to unsuspecting consumers.And let’s not forget the environmental issues that China is currently dealing with, which impact its soil and crops, as well as the food and water consumed by both humans and farm animals. Who could forget the images of more than 16,000 dead and diseased pigs dumped into the Huangpu River? Or recent estimates that one-sixth of China’s soil is affected by industrial runoff and factory pollution; that over 13 million tons of crops harvested yearly were contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium; or that 22 million acres of farmland were plagued with pesticide contamination. The government of China even reported, in a 2012 study, that 55 percent of the country’s groundwater ranked as “poor” or “very poor.”

This systemic failure of food safety oversight in China appears not to have fazed USDA decision-makers – they gave the green light to four Chinese plants to process slaughtered chickens from the U.S., Canada and Chile, and import the fowl back into this country.  U.S. food inspectors will not be monitoring the plants – except for one yearly visit, which the plant operators will reportedly know of ahead of time! Would you want to serve your family chicken processed in a country with such a dismal food safety record? Since Chinese-processed chicken does not have to bear “Country Of Origin Labeling,” consumers will have no way of knowing if it’s an ingredient in their chicken nuggets or chicken soup.

The other mystery is why any U.S. company would want to send U.S.-raised and slaughtered chickens over 7,000 miles to China to be processed, cooked, and then shipped back to America, unlabeled, to be sold to unsuspecting families.  No doubt there are plenty of American facilities and workers perfectly willing to process these chickens.

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