aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, May 11, 2007

Chicken from China?

We force our Intellectual Property laws on countries around the world but not our labor laws. Or our food safety requirements. The Boston Globe:

In China, some farmers try to maximize the output from their small plots by flooding produce with unapproved pesticides, pumping livestock with antibiotics banned in the United States, and using human feces as fertilizer to boost soil productivity. But the questionable practices don’t end there: Chicken pens are frequently suspended over ponds where seafood is raised, recycling chicken waste as a food source for seafood, according to a leading food safety expert who served as a federal adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.

China’s suspect agricultural practices could soon affect American consumers. Federal authorities are working on a proposal to allow chickens raised, slaughtered, and cooked in China to be sold here, and under current regulations, store labels do not have to indicate the meat’s origin.

Georgia objects:

According to Lucius Adkins , president of United Poultry Growers Association , the idea “should be strangled in infancy.” The group represents more than 700 producers in Georgia , one of the nation’s leading poultry producing states.

“You don’t know what conditions existed in that plant [in China]. You didn’t have a government representative there watching [poultry] being slaughtered and processed. It’s going to come here packaged,” Adkins said. “They’re already killing our pets. Do we want to eat their food?

No. But I’d like to see into our chicken slaughtering and processing plants here, too. I don’t want the chicken from China, but I’m thinking food safety is a fig leaf and Adkins would object to the food safety regime I’d like to see here as well.

SEE ALSO: A call for glass walls on slaughterhouses.