Seriously??, is this country in such a desperate mess that we have to ship chicken
all the way to China to have it "processed" and then sent back??
How long does that take? I guess it's not gonna be too fricken FRESH now is it?
How about safety from contamination?
I guess it really is time to buy local and eat local until the SWAT teams take out the small
organic growers...
"Chinese chicken" will soon have a whole new meaning, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture
recently gave the green-light to four chicken processing plants in
China, allowing chicken raised and slaughtered in the U.S. to be
exported to China for processing, and then shipped back to the U.S. and
sold on grocery shelves here.
The actual arrangement will take
some time to set in, however. "All this means is that we've deemed
China's poultry processing equivalent to the process in the United
States," says Arianne Perkins, USDA public affairs specialist. Individual companies will still have to be certified, something Perkins says has not happened yet.
MORE HERE
That's government regulation for you.
ReplyDeleteIt's clearly cheaper and easier to ship over there, process and send it back then to try to do it in North America.
Brilliant.
That was a really good find, Irish.
ReplyDeleteDon't buy food that states "Processed by***for so-and-so". Check your labels. For meat, buy local or join a farmer's co-op. Do not eat fast food. Raise your own chickens. If you just cannot bear to eat your own, trade chickens with a neighbor or bring them to a butcher for processing. If you are lazy, and don't care what chemicals they are putting in food to try to keep it fresh, you will get the outsourced food.
Tip for everyone out there: become a butcher - you will ALWAYS have a job that is in demand.
This has been going on for years with fish. About 80% of "Twice Frozen" fish caught in the US or Alaska is bulk frozen here, shipped there, thawed, processed and bagged, refrozen in smaller bulk lots, shipped back here again, then boxed here with a US company's address on the box. Your stay-fresh bag of panko-crusted salmon may very well be 3-6 months old.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting that it's cheaper to ship 10,000 tons of frozen fish from Alaska to China then back to US container distribution hubs than it is to fly or transport by rail 10,000 tons of fish from Alaska to overland distribution hubs.
What this will do to the deomgraphics of chicken farming I don't know, but it might just cause a shift towards locations closer to intermodal stops.
That link you sent me to Mark's Daily Apple is amazing, btb. First time in 5 years I haven't bought a single bit of processed food on this voyage.