August 28, 2010

US reassures Russia over poultry meat safety

The US government, concerned Russia will link a US egg recall to chicken safety and reinstate a freshly lifted ban on US chicken, have sent a letter to Moscow stressing that the two issues are not related.

The letter, written by the US Food and Drug Administration, emphasised to Russian officials that US broiler production is not involved in the egg recall, according to the USDA.

Wright County and Hillandale Farms of Iowa have recalled more than 500 million eggs since mid-August when they were linked to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people in 22 states.

It has been a little more than a week since Russia partially lifted a seven-month ban on US chicken that has prevented hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US exports. US chicken producers depend on countries like Russia to buy dark meat portions of chicken that are not as popular in US supermarkets and restaurants as white meat.

The US Poultry and Egg Export Council recently released a statement to media outlets in Russia that reads: "The poultry meat and egg segments of the US poultry industry are completely separate entities. The products never come in contact with each other and are produced at separate facilities remotely located from one another, which fully excludes any possibility of cross-contamination."

Toby Moore, a spokesman for the group, said Russia has not reinstated the ban, but high-level government officials have been publicly stressing concerns that the egg recall might be reason to once again block US chicken.

The US was a major supplier of chicken - mostly leg quarters - to Russia before the ban. US exporters shipped about US$744 million worth of chicken to Russia in 2009, according to statistics maintained by the US-based National Chicken Council.

On January 1 Russia announced it would no longer allow imports of any chicken processed with chlorinated rinses, a sanitisation method used by all major US processors at the time. The USDA has now pledged to Russia that it will certify that US chicken shipments are sanitised by one of three methods that don't use chlorine and are approved by Russia.