Scores of Americans are in an uproar since Food Safety News revealed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will soon allow U.S. chickens to be sent to China for processing before being shipped back to the states for human consumption.
This arrangement is especially disturbing given China’s subpar food
safety record and the fact that there are no plans to station on-site USDA
inspectors at Chinese plants. Also, American consumers won’t know which
brands of chicken are processed in China because there’s no requirement
to label it as such.
To ease concerns, lobbyists and chicken industry proponents argue no
U.S. company will ever ship chicken to China for processing because it
wouldn’t work economically.
“Economically, it doesn’t make much sense,” said Tom Super, spokesman
for the National Chicken Council, in a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle.
“Think about it: A Chinese company would have to purchase frozen
chicken in the U.S., pay to ship it 7,000 miles, unload it, transport it
to a processing plant, unpack it, cut it up, process/cook it, freeze
it, repack it, transport it back to a port, then ship it another 7,000
miles. I don’t know how anyone could make a profit doing that.”
Yet, a similar process is already being used for U.S. seafood.
According to the Seattle Times,
domestically caught Pacific salmon and Dungeness crab are being
processed in China and shipped back to the U.S. because of significant
cost savings.
“There are 36 pin bones in a salmon and the best way to remove them
is by hand,” said Charles Bundrant, founder of Trident, which ships
about 30 million pounds of its 1.2 billion-pound annual harvest to China
for processing. “Something that would cost us $1 per pound labor here,
they get it done for 20 cents in China.”
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