Photo of a worker at a Chinese chicken farm from the Washington Post
The prospect that chicken hatched, raised, cooked, and frozen in China could soon be on the menu at your kid’s school was the subject of a couple of letters to the editor in the Washington Post this week (not available online). First, on Monday, May 28, Richard Raymond, the USDA’s Undersecretary for Food Safety, wrote a letter critical of Harold Meyerson’s May 23 op-ed “Chicken Roulette,” in which Meyerson, citing Rick Weiss’s May 20 story “Tainted Chinese Imports Common,” had written:
“Under pressure from U.S. agribusiness, which wants more entry to the Chinese market—something the Chinese will not grant absent more entry to our market—the Agriculture Department is reportedly inclined to change its rules and let China send us its chicken undisguised.”
Weiss had reported that the Chinese are offering a quid pro quo: you let us send you our chicken, and we’ll lift our 4-year-old ban on U.S. beef.
Raymond, stating that he wanted to correct “misinformation” in Meyerson’s column, wrote that it was not true that the USDA wants to “change its rules to allow China to export cooked poultry to the United States.” He stated that the USDA is in the process of evaluating China’s application, and that the process is the same as it would be for any other country. So far, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has audited a grand total of three Chinese facilities and concluded that they pass the test. Apparently the only remaining steps before final approval is a public comment period and another trip to China to “reaffirm the equivalency of China’s system.” Raymond concluded with these reassuring words: “Chinese officials have been eager to discuss this issue and share our belief in its importance.” (Yeah, and didn’t one official say something about working hard to fulfill the lofty and sacred duties? Before he was sentenced to death for corruption?)
On Wednesday, May 30, Raymond was taken to task by one Charles W. McMillion, a Washington-based economist, who objected to Raymond’s claim that “Currently, China does not export any meat, poultry or egg products to the United States.” McMillion, citing Commerce Department food import records, asserted that:
“In the first three months of 2007, the records show U.S. imports from China of $3,942,000 in meat, particularly frog meat but also rabbit, deer, and poultry, including edible offal. The United States imported $481,000 of bird eggs in shells and another $30,000 of bird eggs not in shells. The records show imports from China of an additional $19,348,000 in non-fish animal parts, such as guts, bladders and stomachs.”
Edible offal? Maybe that’s what Tony Corbo, a lobbyist for Food and Water Watch, was talking about (as reported in the Weiss article) when he said, referring to the USDA’s audits of the Chinese chicken packing facilities: “Everyone who has seen them was grossed out.”
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July 22, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Is Xenophobia the Dark Side of Locovorism? « What on Earth Are We Eating?
[...] else, we’ve been tempted in our blog entries by the joys of alliteration (who can resist the Chinese Chickens?), as well as the colorful, gross-out images that have been coming to us in media accounts of food [...]