I wrote this blog post in 2014, but I see no reason to edit the details.
Are we playing chicken with our food supply? Many would say yes after the USDA helped China to get into the U.S. chicken market by certifying Chinese processing plants in 2006. Let me get this straight. We kill chickens here and then send them to be processed in China where their food safety record is poor. China is where they found insecticide-soaked hams (Smithfield Hams was sold to a Chinese company in 2013), soy sauce was made from human hair, melamine in babies milk powder caused six deaths and thousands to be hospitalized and adulterated mutton was sold that was really rat meat.
This gift of approval to China took place during then president George W. Bush's time in office.
"After the ruling, USDA inspectors went to China and determined that Chinese poultry plants were eligible to process U.S. chickens. But food problems persisted in the country. Before the year was out, people in China were sickened by fish tainted with illegal antibiotics, vegetables covered in pesticides, snails infected with meningitis and poultry carrying the avian flu virus. Congress voted to completely defund the USDA’s poultry inspections of Chinese imports." (Newsweek The Curious Case of the Chinese Chicken Import-Export Business, Joe Kloc/September 28, 2014 10:12 AM EDT)"China then appealed to the World Trade Organization, funding was resumed and the approval process was started again. USDA audits found China unfit to process US chickens. In 2013, China was granted certification for four Chinese plants."Why are we processing chicken in China? Rice from China contained high lead and arsenic, mushrooms were found to be soaked in bleach, bean sprouts contained antibiotics and samonella and many dogs have died after they ate pet food that contained "poultry from China".
Processing chicken in China does not make sense economically even to the industry experts.
Who were the players who got USDA approval for processing their chicken in China? Who will benefit financially? And who will this hurt?
Most cases of salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis are thought to be associated with eating raw or undercooked poultry meat, or with cross-contamination of other foods by these items. There are no publicly available data on rates of salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis in China. In the United States, infections from these two bacteria sickened nearly 14,000 people in 2014. Of this group, 3,221 were hospitalized and 41 died.
Poultry meat can also contain contaminants, such as heavy metals, and antibiotic residues if birds are treated with antibiotics in an inappropriate fashion. Specifically, when poultry farmers use antibiotics inappropriately (quantity, type and timing), residues can persist in muscle, organs and eggs and toxic and harmful residues build up in the birds. These risks are probably greater for poultry raised and processed in China than for poultry raised and processed in the United States.