September 29, 2009
China formally starts investigation into US chicken parts
China Monday (Sep 28) formally launched an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into chicken parts imports from the US, two days after US lawmakers agreed to end a gag order that prevented the US from even considering importing Chinese cooked poultry.
Following the Obama administration decision to impose hefty tariffs on Chinese-made tyres, China said it would investigate chicken wings and feet, as well as automotive imports from the US.
China's Ministry of Commerce said it believes that this case meets the legal conditions and has decided to conduct an investigation of unfair trade practices like dumping and subsidising of US chicken products. The ministry added that the case had been requested by Chinese chicken producers.
Meanwhile, the US poultry industry had used the threat of the Chinese investigation, and curbs on wing and feet imports, to lobby for an end to a Congressional prohibition against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) plan on certifying Chinese plants for exporting cooked poultry to the US.
China has already brought a WTO case against the ban.
Last Friday (Sep 25), US lawmakers agreed to remove the ban from the USDA funding bill but restated that poultry processed in China must meet US sanitary conditions before being shipped.
The author of the ban, Representative Rosa DeLauro, had expressed concern for the safety of US consumers, after a series of food safety scandals in China.
The ban was renewed last year after a scandal in which melamine, a plastic component added into milk to cheat protein tests, killed at least six Chinese infants and sickened about 300,000 children who had drunk the contaminated milk formula.
In the US, chicken wings and feet are virtually worthless where they sell for about US$0.02/lb but they are considered a delicacy in China where they fetch US$0.40/lb.
According to China's Ministry of Commerce, statistics from the China Animal Agricultural Association have shown that imports from the US are equivalent to about half of the total output of Chinese poultry producers. In the first half of this year, US chicken imports rose to over 60 percent of Chinese production.
