China hails equivalence of poultry meat systems with U.S.

Chicken meat is on sale in a Walmart store in Beijing on September 23, 2019. [Photo: VCG]

China's General Administration of Customs (GAC) on Saturday welcomed U.S. confirmation that China's poultry supervision system is equivalent to that of the U.S.

The U.S. Federal Register, an official gazette that has been authorized to publish public notices on behalf of the U.S federal government, on Friday released the final evaluation on China's poultry meat exports to the U.S., confirming the equivalence of the two countries' poultry meat supervision systems.

China has had a goal of shipping cooked chicken to the U.S. from as far back as 2004. Since then, the GAC has urged the U.S. to comply with the relevant regulations of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) to import cooked poultry meat.

Over the years, in addition to submitting detailed materials related to the supervision and handling of its cooked poultry, China hosted visiting groups from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The teams visited China a total of nine times to inspect and help Chinese export enterprises wishing to export cooked poultry to the U.S. bring their quality and safety management system in line with U.S. import requirements.

In 2016, the U.S. confirmed that China's poultry processing inspection system was equivalent to that of the United States and allowed China to send live poultry to the U.S. to be slaughtered for sale in America or other countries. The new evaluation goes a step further to allow processed products made from birds slaughtered in China to enter the U.S.

The move is seen as a sign of trade progress. During the past two weeks, China and the U.S. have had constructive talks and decided to roll back tariffs in different phases.