This is from the NY Times. It's from 2007 but you can see why we need to be concerned.
WASHINGTON — In China, some farmers try to maximize the output from their small plots by flooding produce with unapproved pesticides, pumping livestock with antibiotics banned in other countries and using human feces as fertilizer to increase soil productivity.
But the questionable practices do not end there: Chicken pens are frequently suspended over ponds where seafood is raised, recycling chicken waste as a food source for seafood, according to a leading food safety expert who served as adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Suspect Chinese agricultural practices could soon affect consumers in the United States. Government authorities are working on a proposal to allow chickens raised, slaughtered, and cooked in China to be sold in the United States, and under current regulations, store labels do not have to indicate the origin of the poultry.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, China's top agricultural export goal is opening the U.S. market to its cooked chickens.
Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut who is fighting the change, says that China does not deserve entry to the coveted, closed poultry market.
Agricultural exports from China to the United States ballooned from $1 billion in 2002 to nearly $2.3 billion in 2006, according to the USDA Economic Research Service. DeLauro, head of an agricultural subcommittee in the House of Representatives, said Congress should signal its willingness to restrict imports from China until Beijing improved food safety oversight.
"There is deception," DeLauro said. "There is lax regulation, and they've got unsanitary conditions. They need to hear from us they're at risk. Congress has to look at limiting some of their agricultural imports."
The USDA, which shares food safety oversight with the FDA, says that its proposal to allow the sale of Chinese chicken is in the early stages and that there will be many opportunities for the public to be heard on the matter. Under the plan, any country seeking to export meat, poultry, or egg products to the United States must earn "equivalency," with documentation that its product is as safe and wholesome as the domestic competition.
Agriculture officials would review records, conduct on-site audits, and confirm that foreign laboratories could ensure the safety of the food, said Steven Cohen, a spokesman for the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The agency would also inspect imported products as they enter the United States, he said. "This is a process that has barely begun, and there is a very lengthy review," Cohen said.
According to Lucius Adkins, president of United Poultry Growers Association, the idea "should be strangled in infancy." The group represents more than 700 producers in Georgia, one of the leading U.S. poultry producing states.
"You don't know what conditions existed in that plant" in China, he said. In addition, no U.S. government representative in China would be watching poultry being slaughtered and processed, he said. "It's going to come here packaged."
The National Chicken Council, which represents companies that produce 95 percent of U.S.-grown poultry, has not taken a position on the proposal.
Currently, the United States imports almost no poultry, except for a small amount of chicken exported by Canadian producers, said Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the trade association.
But Americans do eat food from around the world, Lobb said.
"People don't have any problem with potpie from Canada. How they would feel about frozen chicken from China or specialty Chinese products that are canned or dried or something, I don't know."
In China's agricultural system, many farmers toil on one-acre plots, while U.S. farmers often work thousands of acres, said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia and former chairman of the FDA's science advisory board.
In China, "there are hundreds of thousands of these little farms," Doyle said. "They have small ponds. And over the ponds - in not all cases, but in many cases - they'll have chicken cages. It might be like 20,000 chickens in cages. The chicken feces is what feeds the shrimp."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that up to 10 percent of shrimp imported from China contains salmonella, he said. Even more worrisome are shrimp imported from China that contain antibiotics that no amount of cooking can neutralize.
Last month alone, the FDA rejected 51 shipments of catfish, eel, shrimp, and tilapia imported from China because of contaminants like salmonella, veterinary drugs, and nitrofuran, a cancer-causing chemical. A long history of such test results spurred the FDA to begin working proactively with Chinese farmers on safer seafood production methods, Doyle said. Even in poultry produced in the United States, there is contamination with salmonella, he said.
"In terms of veterinary drugs and pesticides, well, good food handling practices won't fix that," Doyle added. "That has to be addressed in the country of origin."
