China Is 'Playing Chicken' With American Food Safety

[pcgame]

In this week's analysis behind the news video, JBS CEO Art Thompson discusses how China has purchased the world's largest pork products producer, Smithfield Foods, headquartered in the United States. Now the United States Department of Agriculture is allowing American chickens to be exported to China, processed, and then exported back to the United States without any food inspection prior to being imported back into America, and without any country of origin label.

 

[Acala]

The really interesting thing to me is that it is economical to ship something as bulky as a chicken, in a refrigerated vessel, to the other side of the planet for processing, and then ship it back again. Something is really out of balance.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Okay, the quality concern is legit. But the "red scare" rhetoric is over the top and unnecessary (and many of the narrator's comments apply to the US regime as well). [h=1]The Alleged China Threat[/h]

 

[Zippyjuan]

Partially accurate.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...-china-triggers-u-s-food-safety-protests.html

Food-safety advocates are raising alarms over a decision by the Obama administration to permit chicken processed in China to be sold in the U.S. even after several high-profile incidents of food contamination.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in addressing a decade-long trade dispute over farm imports, said it will allow 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 issue is the latest flashpoint for U.S. concerns over the safety of goods from China, which since 2007 have included tainted baby formula and evidence of the chemical melamine in pet food and eggs. China in recent months has had an outbreak of avian influenza in its chicken flocks and 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.

No Fear

Poultry producers say almost all the chicken eaten in the U.S. will still be produced and processed domestically. The U.S. government currently allows Canada, Chile, France and Israel to export processed poultry to the U.S.

“Ninety-nine percent of the chicken we consume here is hatched, raised and processed in the U.S.,” Tom Super, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, a Washington-based industry group, said in an e-mail. “We don’t expect that to change any time soon.”

Awaiting Identification

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, said by phone. Processed chicken from China must be labeled as a product of the Asian nation, according to the agency.

 

[Southron]

The really interesting thing to me is that it is economical to ship something as bulky as a chicken, in a refrigerated vessel, to the other side of the planet for processing, and then ship it back again. Something is really out of balance.

If I had to guess, we export so little to China that most containers are either going back empty or with garbage anyway.

 

[Zippyjuan]

If I had to guess, we export so little to China that most containers are either going back empty or with garbage anyway.

Actually we do send them goods and a lot of trash- much of our recycling gets sent to them to be processed.

 

[pathtofreedom]

What's the problem? This is deregulation and free markets in action. Again you guys should be in favor of this.

 

[redmod79]

What's the problem? This is deregulation and free markets in action. Again you guys should be in favor of this.

The goons stopped the printing press? They let us use the currencies of our choice? ALL regulations are gone? LOL. Not even close.

 

[donnay]

What's the problem? This is deregulation and free markets in action. Again you guys should be in favor of this.

Free market set up by government and their cronies to blow out our economy. How is this plan even remotely economical sound?

 

[Lucille]

Chicken Melamine
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/chicken-melamine-china/

"The Food Safety and Inspection Service's number-one priority is always food safety," Perkins says. In the official memo, the FSIS says that "all outstanding issues have been resolved"-a pretty big promise considering that in the past year alone China has made news for passing off rat meat as mutton, selling sausages filled with maggots, inexplicably finding thousands of dead pigs floating in the waters of Shanghai, and even having an outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu in live poultry.

The really interesting thing to me is that it is economical to ship something as bulky as a chicken, in a refrigerated vessel, to the other side of the planet for processing, and then ship it back again. Something is really out of balance.

Can you believe? It's really insane. I'm sure it has to do with the regs here. One of our state reps was telling me how the regs are so tight in AZ, and they have so few inspectors, very few places can slaughter, and can only do it on certain days.

What's the problem? This is deregulation and free markets in action. Again you guys should be in favor of this.

LOL There he goes again, invoking the mythical free market.

 

[pathtofreedom]

How is the free market mythical? Food companies send processing of chickens to China because it is in their economic self interest to do so. They are allowed to do this due to a lack of government regulation. Again that is the free market. Maybe it isn't exactly what you want but it is indeed the free market. Also how does a printing press cause this? All the strong dollar does is make it more economical to make good in countries with weaker currencies. That said the production of Chicken is still done in the US so you really can't blame a US dollar for it.

 

[Danke]

Will this chicken be kosher?

 

[Southron]

All the strong dollar does is make it more economical to make good in countries with weaker currencies.

China weakens its currency intentionally to make its exports cheaper. That doesn't sound like a free market to me.

 

[pathtofreedom]

China weakens its currency intentionally to make its exports cheaper. That doesn't sound like a free market to me.

Except only processing is done in China not the actual production of the good itself. Actual processing of the good itself is cheaper regardless of exchange rates.

 

[Lucille]

How is the free market mythical? Food companies send processing of chickens to China because it is in their economic self interest to do so. They are allowed to do this due to a lack of government regulation. Again that is the free market. Maybe it isn't exactly what you want but it is indeed the free market. Also how does a printing press cause this? All the strong dollar does is make it more economical to make good in countries with weaker currencies. That said the production of Chicken is still done in the US so you really can't blame a US dollar for it.

The fact that it's in their economic interest to ship chickens thousands of miles to be processed and then shipped back here to be sold speaks volumes, don't you think? (Let's ignore that they sought permission from the USG.) I just mentioned the regs that jam up AZ meat processing plants. If all of this is "free," I'd hate to see controlled.

I didn't mention the USD, but I'm sure China having the US Treasury by the short hairs also has something to do with it.

Ron Paul: The Myth of a US Free Market
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09/ron-paul/the-myth-of-a-us-free-market/

One of the most enduring myths in the United States is that this country has a free market, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, government has pervaded so many aspects of the market that what we see as a free market is merely the structural shell of formerly free institutions, while government pulls the strings behind the scenes.

Nothing Outside the State
http://blog.independent.org/2010/03/16/nothing-outside-the-state/

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life.

Once More, with Feeling: Our System Is Not Socialism, [or free market] but Participatory Fascism
http://blog.independent.org/2012/10...m-is-not-socialism-but-participatory-fascism/

The Vampire Economy: Italy, Germany, and the US
http://mises.org/daily/1935

 

[Tudo]

Will this chicken be kosher?

I'm sure there will be empires etc with all the proper stamps/identification. Have no fear the Chinese and big business are here