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  • 2015-07-13 (xsd:date)
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  • Is China Re-Shipping Processed Chickens Back to the U.S.? (en)
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  • Back in August 2013, the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a final report regarding the food safety system governing the processing of chicken for export in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The gist of that report was that four Chinese poultry processors were approved to begin shipping a limited amount of processed chicken products to the United States, provided those products were derived from chickens raised in countries that met FSIS standards: This action followed years of wrangling between the U.S. and China over the export of meat products to each other: The USDA's action in approving Chinese poultry exports to the U.S. raised concerns among many American consumers, especially given China's spotty record for product safety, the absence of on-site USDA inspectors, and the lack of a requirement for Chinese poultry exports to bear labels identifying their country of origin: The USDA approval also raised a host of issues for American consumers about guarantees of food safety: In mid-2015, this issue was manifested online as a concern that American-based food companies were laying off workers in the U.S. in favor of shipping their chickens to China for processing, with the results to be re-shipped to the U.S. for sale here: In substance, these rumors echoed another issue from the same timeframe regarding the acquisition of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company, Shuanghui International Holdings, which led to similar claims that U.S.-raised hogs would be shipped to China, slaughtered and packaged for sale there, and sent back to the U.S. Although the August 2013 FSIS report theoretically paved the way for China to process U.S.-raised chickens and ship them back to America, processing giant Tyson Foods told us they are not shipping poultry to China and then re-importing it as claimed in the examples reproduced above: It's unclear that such activity is actually taking place at all, even on a small scale, as the economics of shipping animals and processed meat products back and forth across the Pacific are questionable:A likelier scenario is that any chickens exported to China from America would be processed and sold there for domestic consumption (not reshipped to the U.S.), and China's long-term goal is to export chickens raised and processed there to the U.S.: (en)
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