USDA continues to fight Chinese ban on US poultry, eggs
WASHINGTON, June 8, 2016 - It's been nearly a year and a
half since China initiated a total ban on chicken and eggs from the U.S., following
the detection of avian influenza, and there are still no signs that Chinese
officials are willing to consider a more limited, regional approach to the
prohibition, says USDA Chief Veterinary Officer Jack Shere.
Shere’s predecessor, John Clifford, traveled to China
several times to negotiate a lifting of the ban, and Shere is considering a
trip soon, but the talks between the countries appear deadlocked, he said in an
exclusive interview with Agri-Pulse.
That trip won’t happen, Shere said, unless he sees a real
opportunity for progress. “There has to be a decision between the two
governments that they’re willing to move forward, otherwise it’s a
non-productive trip,” Shere said. “So we’ve got to get indications from them
that they’re willing to talk.”
The stakes are high: In 2014, China imported $390 million
worth of poultry and eggs, according to USDA data.
China can be a difficult country to work with, compared to
other U.S. trading partners, he said. Many countries, like Canada and Mexico,
agreed to regional bans on U.S. poultry and eggs after the H5N2 and H5N8
strains of avian influenza, carried by wild birds, made their way along the
Mississippi and Pacific flyways in 2015. The virus spread through 15
states and USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service helped coordinate
the euthanizing of tens of millions of layer hens and turkeys.
But after all that, the U.S. still managed to keep 84
percent of its poultry export markets intact, Shere said, as most countries
chose not to put blanket bans on U.S. poultry, as China did. In addition, the
major broiler-producing states in the Eastern U.S. were unaffected by the
spread of the virus.
“Now countries are becoming more accepting of
regionalization and only setting bans on the areas that are infected….,
eventually removing those bans based on proof that the virus is no longer
there,” he said.
“China is different. It is less likely to move on the basis
of what the (World Organization for Animal Health) says. They form their own
opinions. They work within their own government to decide.”
There’s another issue beyond just proving to China that U.S.
broilers and laying hens are not infected with bird flu – China still doesn’t
have USDA approval to export its own chicken to the U.S., Shere said.
“We’ve been working with China and Korea and other countries
that have banned our poultry (due to avian influenza) ... to explain to them
what we’ve done to eradicate it and to get them to accept our poultry again,”
Shere said. “But many times … these things are tied up in other political
issues.”
When it comes to negotiating with China and its ban on U.S.
chicken and beef – China has banned U.S. beef since the country’s first case of
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) was discovered here in 2003
– “it’s ‘you give me X and I’ll give you Y’ and that’s where the negotiations
go,” Shere said. “We would like them to be based solely on science, of course.”
Still, there may be a breakthrough soon on U.S. approval of
Chinese chicken.
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced
in March that it had approved China's food safety system and several chicken
slaughter and processing plants. After a number of audits over several years,
FSIS has declared that at least some Chinese chicken is fit to be exported to
the U.S. The next step will be for FSIS to issue a proposed federal rule to
allow that to happen.
A U.S. government official who asked not to be named said
the proposed rule is in its final stage of development and should be published
soon.
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