In a release, U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, "raised her strong objections to the
U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s move to grant China’s poultry processing
plants standards of food safety equivalency to those in the United
States."
"As the former Chairwoman and current senior member of the
subcommittee responsible for funding USDA, DeLauro has long fought to ensure
trade does not trump public health and that unsafe poultry products from China
do not enter the United States," she said in the prepared statement.
“The fact that USDA, the agency charged with ensuring the
poultry products the public consumes are safe, is green lighting the export of
processed poultry products to the United States from a country with an
atrocious food safety record should be deeply worrisome to American
consumers. The audit released today erases neither the fact that past
inspections revealed unsanitary conditions at China’s poultry processing plants
nor the fact that U.S. inspectors will not be onsite at these plants going
forward to ensure the exported products are safe. Meanwhile, I remain
deeply concerned that USDA appears to be heading down the same path with
China’s slaughtering plants, even as cases of bird flu deaths are reported out
of that country. Sadly, business interests, which are currently also
attacking country-of-origin labeling so consumers do not even know where the
meat they are consuming is coming from, are trumping the public
interest.”
Editor's note: All information in this post was contributed. Click one of the buttons below to share it.
Labels: China, poultry, processing plants, Rosa Delauro, USDA