Don't Trust a Chicken Nugget That's Visited China

Would you willingly eat a chicken nuggets processed in a country that
has no intention of meeting U.S. food-safety standards? Most Americans
likely wouldn't.

That may explain why the U.S. Department of Agriculture waited until
Friday -- the day before a long holiday weekend -- to announce that it
had ended a ban on Chinese chicken imports by approving four Chinese
poultry processors to ship processed ("heat-treated/cooked") chicken
to the U.S. The report on the approved poultry plants noted that the
audit set out to "to determine whether the People's Republic of
China's (PRC) food safety system governing poultry processing remains
equivalent to that of the United States (U.S.), with the ability to
produce products that are safe, wholesome, unadulterated, and properly
labeled." Needless to say, the Chinese plants passed.

Initially, at least, the chickens will be slaughtered in the U.S. (or
another nation that's allowed to export slaughtered chicken to the
U.S.), then shipped to China for processing and re-export. That's the
good news. The bad news is that, according to the New York Times, no
USDA inspectors will be present in the Chinese processing plants
(despite the fact that China has never before been allowed to export
chicken to the U.S.), thus offering consumers no guarantees where the
processed chickens were in fact slaughtered. Even worse, because the
birds will be processed, the USDA will not require point-of-origin
labeling (under USDA rules, foods that have been cooked aren't subject
to point-of-origin labeling). In other words: Consumers will have no
way to tell if those chicken nuggets in the supermarket freezer were
processed in the U.S. or in China.

That's a big problem. For more than a decade, China has earned a
reputation as one of the world's worst food-safety offenders. In just
the last year, consumers have been confronted with a bird flu
outbreak, news of sales of 46-year-old chicken feet and reports of
poisonous fake mutton. These are not isolated incidents, but rather
the most spectacular instances of a crisis that has become so severe
that some consumers now smuggle quantities of infant milk formula from
foreign countries into China so as to avoid buying potentially tainted
Chinese dairy products.

The Chinese government, sensitive to people's beliefs that it isn't
doing enough to protect their food supply, has made a point of
regular, ineffective crackdowns on food-safety violators. Yet in July,
when a senior Chinese policy maker involved in developing new food
safety standards was asked at a press conference if and when it would
meet developed-world standards, he conceded that it would, instead,
have to meet China's "national condition" as a developing country. In
other words: China's food supply cannot meet USDA standards.

China's "national condition" has already seemingly had a harmful
effect on its poultry – and on U.S. consumers unlucky enough to have
bought it for their pets. (The U.S. allows chicken imports for animal
consumption.) As of December 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration reported that it had received reports of 501 dog deaths
(and thousands of dog sicknesses), many seemingly from chicken jerky
treats manufactured in China, dating back to 2007. But the department
has so far been unable to pinpoint a cause for the problem, and the
Chinese have been unwilling to volunteer one.

What was the USDA thinking when it decided to sign-off on Chinese
processed chicken exports for humans? Probably not the best interest
of American consumers. Rather, U.S. beef and poultry producers have
long sought to have the restrictions lifted in hope of encouraging
Beijing to reciprocate and open its huge market to more U.S. meat
exports (U.S. beef is currently banned for import into China). It's a
reasonable goal, and one that the USDA should pursue -- just not at
the expense of a safe U.S. food supply.