Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 7/26/18



Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) has sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue questioning USDA’s process for approving three new Chinese poultry processing plants as eligible to export product to the United States.

DeLauro says internal emails, produced through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) took a “stunningly passive approach” in that process, and that two of those three facilities were not audited by the agency.

DeLauro fought USDA’s decision in August 2013 to deem China’s food safety system as equivalent to that of the United States, contending that the agency has not thoroughly audited China’s poultry processing plants.

“I strongly believe FSIS must be much more proactive and thorough when it comes to the evaluation of other countries’ food safety systems,” DeLauro wrote, noting concerns in China include the recent discovery of “multiple antibiotic-resistant genes being carried by the country’s commercial flock.”

She raises several questions that she wants Perdue to answer by Aug. 31. Among them are the email exchange between FSIS and its Chinese counterparts on the status of two of the three plants that were approved.

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