Food-safety advocates are protesting over a decision by the Obama administration to permit chicken processed in China to be sold in the United States.
According to Bloomberg, advocates are upset the permit was given a pass despite several high-profile incidents of food contamination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allowed poultry slaughtered in the U.S. and Canada to be processed in China and returned to the U.S. for consumption.
Critics are vowing to fight the decision, which they say puts consumers at risk due to lax Chinese factory oversight.
"The Chinese food-safety system has had significant failures in the enforcement of its food-safety laws and regulations," Senator Charles Schumer wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The backlash is the latest concern over the safety of goods from China. In recent months, China has had an outbreak of avian influenza in its chicken flocks, In March, Shanghai authorities retrieved more than 11,000 dead pigs floating in a river.
"Consumers should know that any processed poultry from China will be produced under equivalent food safety standards and conditions as U.S. poultry," the Agriculture Department said in a fact sheet.
According to Census Bureau data, last year the United States exported $354.1 million worth of poultry products to China, about seven percent of total U.S. poultry exports.
"There's a concern that this might be the first step to that," Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington told Bloomberg.
Meat processors, such as Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), Sanderson Farms Inc. (SAFM) and McDonald's Corp. (MCD) don't plan on importing chicken from China.
"China does not have a food-safety system that allows for any level of top-down management like we have in the United States," Patricia Buck, director of outreach and education for the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention in Raleigh, North Carolina, a non-profit food-safety advocate, said according to Bloomberg
The next step is for China to identify companies that will process imported poultry, Stacy Kish, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service. Processed chicken from China must be labeled as a product of the Asian nation, according to the agency.
