Chinese importing of processed chicken into the USA
http://www.nytimes.c...to-us.html?_r=0
Thoughts?
Why is there no labeling requirement on processed food?
"And because the poultry will be processed, it will not require country-of-origin labeling. Nor will consumers eating chicken noodle soup from a can or chicken nuggets in a fast-food restaurant know if the chicken came from Chinese processing plants."
I think that is what disturbs me more than anything else. I know where my apples came from, why doesn't the company have to tell me where my processed chicken came from? Of course they could just say they are American/Canadian chickens:
"After that, the U.S.D.A. then audited Chinese processing plants, giving its approval for them to process raw birds from the United States and Canada.
Under the new rules, the Chinese facilities will verify that cooked products exported to the United States came from American or Canadian birds. So no U.S.D.A. inspector will be present in the plants."
Oh that's good so just because the chickens origionated in the USA/Canada we dont' need inspectors because they must be safe to eat just because of their origonal nationality??? Seriously? I want to check those chickens passports!
Merle
From Setanta on the thread I temporarily hyjacked before I made this one:
Setanta made a point that FSIS didn't agree that Chinese poultry system was up to snuff and added this link under my post:
http://www.foodsafet...not-equivalent/
I then thanked her for the post.
Can you just clarify what's going on Merle.
The USA sending chickens to China to be processed and sent back?
It would assume so. It's pretty bazzar Simon but that is how the news story read.
As long as the chicken is from USA/Canada they said that there wouldn't be a need to have inspectors.
But my problem is how long until they start substituting some of that chicken for another countries chicken behind inspectors backs? If they get a case of chicken that is unusable how can we be sure that they don't take some from a chicken farm in China and say it is still the same chicken?
Or replace some of it if they know that the chicken they have in their back yard may be a lower grade product.
There has to be some kickbacks going on to make this get passed through.
Seems crazy, the processing doesn't meet US standards, but if it's US chicken then it's ok. :dunno:
I just cannot see how can it be cost effective to ship a bunch of chickens to china and back especially with so much unemployment in the west. I do think consumers have a right to know the origin of ingredients and processing...mind you there's only so much room on the packaging. :doh:
That is true I'm not sure McDonalds Chicken Nuggets will have the room to put "This product was processed in China" on the carton lol.
It really astonishes me that they would bring this up out of nowhere like this. It's not like our chicken processing companies are complaning that there is too much product to work with. I'm sure our use of chicken and other meats go up every year along with population but seriously... this can't be the right way to do things on the ethical or economic levels.