What Part of China Uses Beef

Chicken meat for auction at a market place in Anhui province, China. VCG via Getty Images hibernate explanation

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VCG via Getty Images

Chicken meat for sale at a market in Anhui province, Mainland china.

VCG via Getty Images

Cooked chicken from birds grown and raised in Mainland china soon will be headed to America — in a trade bargain that's really about beef.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Th night that the U.S. was greenlighting Chinese chicken imports and getting U.S. beefiness producers access to Prc's about one.four billion consumers. Just the deal is raising concerns among critics who betoken to China'southward long history of food-safe scandals.

The Chinese appetite for beef is huge and growing, but American beef producers have been locked out of that market since a case of mad moo-cow disease cropped up in the U.S. in 2003. In response, many countries, including Republic of korea, Nihon, Mexico and Prc, banned imports of U.Due south. beefiness.

Cathay was the only one of those nations to not eventually lift its ban — and that's a big deal.

"Information technology's a very big market; it'south at least a $2.5 billion market that'due south beingness opened upwards for U.S. beef," Ross said in announcing the trade deal.

Many people long had seen China'due south refusal to lift its ban on U.S. beef imports as a negotiating tactic, a tit for tat aimed at allowing Chinese chicken imports into the United States. The negotiations that led to the new merchandise bargain have been going back and forth for more than a decade, stalled at one bespeak by worries in Congress over China's food-safety practices.

American beef producers are rejoicing that the procedure has finally resulted in allowing them to send beef to China.

"After being locked out of the earth'southward largest market for 13 years, we strongly welcome the announcement that an understanding has been fabricated to restore U.S. beef exports to China," Craig Uden, president of the National Cattlemen'southward Beef Association, said in a statement. "It'southward impossible to overstate how benign this will be for America's cattle producers, and the Trump administration deserves a lot of credit for getting this achieved."

The U.Due south. should exist cleared to export beef to Red china by mid-July. That's also the deadline for the U.S. to finalize rules for the importation of cooked chicken products from China. Why cooked chicken instead of raw?

"For a state to be able to ship meat and poultry products into the U.S., they have to demonstrate that their nutrient-safety inspection system is equivalent to the system hither in the U.S.," explains Brian Ronholm, who served every bit deputy undersecretary for nutrient safety at the U.S. Department of Agronomics under the Obama administration.

"The equivalency determination process for China as it relates to processed [cooked] craven products had been underway, and this deal expedites this process," he says. "China besides is seeking equivalency for their inspection organization for slaughter facilities, but that will exist a longer procedure."

Given the many outbreaks of avian flu Prc has experienced, at that place are also worries that if raw Chinese poultry were processed in the U.South., it could potentially contaminate American plants or somehow spread to birds hither in usa.

Tony Corbo, a senior lobbyist for the food campaign at Nutrient & Water Spotter, an environmental advocacy group, has been raising concerns virtually efforts to open up the U.S. market place to Chinese chicken imports for years. He questions the Chinese government'south ability to enforce food-safe standards, given its poor track record.

That record includes rat meat being sold as lamb, oil recovered from drainage ditches in gutters existence sold every bit cooking oil, and infant formula contaminated with melamine that sickened hundreds of thousands of babies and killed six. In 2014, a Shanghai food-processing factory that supplied international restaurant brands including McDonald'southward and KFC was caught selling stale meat, repackaged with new expiration dates.

Corbo points out that concluding December, Prc'southward own Food and Drug Administration reported it had uncovered as many every bit a half-1000000 cases of food-condom violations just in the starting time three quarters of 2016.

That said, the USDA has gone to China to audit plants that would process the chicken to be shipped to America. Simply Corbo finds petty condolement in that. "You don't know from moment to moment how Mainland china is enforcing nutrient-condom standards," Corbo says.

In contempo months, a team from the USDA's Nutrient Rubber and Inspection Service has traveled to Red china to train Chinese officials in meat safety.

One thing Th'south trade deal did non address: U.South. poultry exports to China. The U.S. used to send a lot of chicken feet over to Prc, where they are a delicacy. But China banned U.S. chicken imports in 2015, later on an outbreak of avian flu in the Midwest.

Red china "was a $750 million market just a few years agone, and at present it's essentially aught. It was one of our most important markets," says Jim Sumner, president of the The states Poultry and Egg Export Council.

But Sumner isn't worried near the new contest from Chinese chicken in the U.S. In fact, he welcomes information technology equally an important step in reopening the Chinese market to U.S. poultry producers.

"Trade is a two-way street," he says.

It's not clear how presently later mid-July we can expect to encounter cooked chicken products from China in U.S. supermarkets. Sumner says he doesn't expect the production to overwhelm store shelves, because the economics of raising chickens in China and then shipping them to America all the same favors U.S. producers.

Maria Godoy is a senior editor with NPR News and host of The Salt. She'due south on Twitter: @mgodoyh

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/12/528139468/chinese-chicken-is-headed-to-america-but-its-really-all-about-beef

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