USDA to Allow China to Process Chickens, Ship Back to U.S By SHAPE magazine | Healthy Living – Tue, Sep 10, 2013 4:15 PM EDT Email Share23757Tweet Print by Charlotte Andersen for SHAPE Newly implemented rules will change the way we process chicken in the U.S. Newly implemented rules will change the way we process chicken in the U.S. Chinese chicken will soon have a whole new meaning, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently gave the green-light to four chicken processing plants in China, allowing chicken raised and slaughtered in the U.S. to be exported to China for processing, and then shipped back to the U.S. and sold on grocery shelves here. The actual arrangement will take some time to set in, however. All this means is that weve deemed Chinas poultry processing equivalent to the process in the United States, says Arianne Perkins, USDA public affairs specialist. Individual companies will still have to be certified, something Perkins says has not happened yet. RELATED: 9 Common Foods that Contain Toxic Ingredients While the logistics are hard to imagine-if we cant safely leave chicken out for the length of a family picnic, how can it be shipped halfway around the world and back with no ill effects?-the USDA is doing its best to reassure both chicken farmers and consumers that the process is 100-percent safe. The Food Safety and Inspection Services number-one priority is always food safety, Perkins says. In the official memo, the FSIS says that all outstanding issues have been resolved-a pretty big promise considering that in the past year alone China has made news for passing off rat meat as mutton, selling sausages filled with maggots, inexplicably finding thousands of dead pigs floating in the waters of Shanghai, and even having an outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu in live poultry. We do have a concern about safety, National Chicken Council senior vice president Bill Roenigk said in a statement. But weve been assured and reassured by the USDA that they will do 100-percent testing on poultry products from China. We have confidence that the USDA will do that testing and do it in a good and adequate manner. However, Perkins adds that while there will be increased testing on the chicken before re-entering the U.S., they will not be doing any on-site monitoring or testing in China, a fact that Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) said in a statement is deeply worrisome for American consumers. Even worse, a report just this month from the United States Government Accountability Office found that the USDAs domestic poultry inspections have a lot of problems anyhow, as they are in the process of replacing certified-USDA inspectors with those provided by the poultry companies themselves.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 02:27:14 +0000