While you have been gnashing your teeth about the mid-terms there is
important news that you need to know which has been flying under the radar.
On Wednesday, the Agriculture Department told stakeholders it had certified four poultry processing plants in the Shandong province of China to export fully cooked, frozen and refrigerated chicken to the United States.
Only Canada and Chile are able to export raw chicken to U.S. due to their approval by the USDA’s Food and Safety Inspection Service (FSIS).
“China’s food safety system is a wreck,” D.C.-based Food and Water Watch said in a statement Thursday. The group has been fighting the USDA on the issue since November 2005. “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,” the statement said. “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.”
[...]
The approved poultry plants are Shandong Delicate Food Co., No. 2 Meat Product Processing Plant of Weifang Legang Food Co., Qingyun Ruifeng Food Co. and Qingdao Nine-alliance Group Co.
I have written about the failures of our own poultry inspection services
here,
here and
here. It's truly amazing that the USDA would allow Chinese imports of chicken even before our own system of inspection has credibility.
It's unclear if the Chinese imported chicken will have to be labeled as such. But, you can depend that it will turn up in U.S. fast food, institutions such as schools, supermarkets, restaurants and anywhere else profits trump safety and quality, and in the U.S. that's almost everywhere.