Unfortunately, though you may enjoy eating your fair share of chicken nuggets, you cannot be completely sure about the origin of the meat, despite numerous claims and efforts to prevent the importation of food with origin such as Chinese.
According to Health and Love Page, poultry can only enter the U.S. if it comes from birds that were raised in the U.S. or in Canada. But, it appears that food imported from China is not completely forbidden in the U.S. and there are still a lot of products with Chinese origin that can be found in U.S. markets!
Food with Chinese Origin Has Been a Cause for Concern
When it comes to food quality and food safety, China’s reputation is not so good, particularly in the recent years. Namely, food coming from China has been linked with some pretty serious food-related scams, including rat meat, plastic rice, and thousands of dead pigs surfacing in Shanghai waters. Hence, a lot of people wonder why the USDA is still allowing food from China to enter American soil.
As Health and Love Page suggest, the chicken is slaughtered in countries which can ship to the U.S. and then the chicken which has been slaughtered is exported to China for the purposes of processing. Then, the poultry is brought into the U.S. However, there are no USDA inspectors in the processing plants, which is quite the concerning knowledge.
No Point-of-Origin Labels?!
According to USDA rules, there are no origin-related labels on cooked foods that we purchase from supermarkets. Since chicken is processed, it will require no label. Hence, we cannot know if the chicken meat we buy was processed in the U.S. or in China.
A similar situation happens with the seafood sold in the U.S. Namely, the processing of the Pacific salmon and Dungeness crab takes place in China and then the processed seafood is imported into the U.S. and sold. Experts claim that this procedure saves large sums of money.
Namely, a procedure that would cost the manufacturers 20 cents per pound in China, in the U.S. the price is a dollar. So, the major reason for approving processed poultry exports from China is not in the interest of the customers in the U.S., but of manufacturers and their profits.
What are your thoughts on these USDA practices? Feel free to share your opinions and thoughts in the comment section!
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