CHINA SLAMS U.S. FOR NOT IMPORTING CHINESE POULTRY

No offense, but I don't have too much faith in Chinese food products, also I live in the highest poultry producing state in the U.S., we could grow enough chickens to feed the world here, why import?



China lambasts US move to block Chinese poultry
Published: March 13, 2009

SHANGHAI: China is stepping up protests against a U.S. ban on Chinese poultry imports and warning it might retaliate — one of several trade spats brewing in these hard times.

"It is needless to explain why such discriminative measures are forbidden by the WTO," Zhang Xiangchen, Beijing's deputy envoy to the World Trade Organization, told a meeting in Geneva on Thursday.

China and the U.S. banned each others' poultry in 2004 following an outbreak of bird flu. But China lifted the ban after a few months and complains that the U.S. side has not followed through on a pledge to open its market to Chinese poultry exports.

Since 2004, China has imported more than 4 million tons of U.S. poultry — mostly feet and other parts of birds that are popular in China but not elsewhere.

Beijing is protesting a measure in the 2009 U.S. federal spending bill, signed by President Barack Obama earlier this week, that extends the U.S. ban by blocking any funds from being used to facilitate imports of poultry products from China.

As exports slump amid the global slowdown, China is growing more assertive over moves it deems protectionist. It says it plans to file a WTO case challenging the poultry ban. Officials here also chafe at measures in the $789 billion U.S. economic stimulus package that favor American goods.

U.S. business, union and farm groups are meanwhile are questioning trade deals set in recent years, amid mounting worries over further job losses.

Zhang said he was instructed by Beijing to express "serious concern."

"What should we, all WTO members, do to prevent such discriminative practice from undermining the multilateral trading system and sending the wrong signal to the outside world at this critical juncture of global crisis?" Zhang asked.

"How should we live up to our commitments repeatedly made both here at the WTO and at the G-20 summit to resist trade protectionism?" he said.

"It's too unfair. It's an outrage!" said Wang Xiulin, head of the Chinese Poultry Association.

"We opened our doors to their poultry, but they broke their promise," he said.

China's WTO mission in Geneva conveyed a verbal message to the U.S. mission urging a change in the policy and warning Beijing may need to "adopt related measures to poultry products imported from the United States," the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The U.S. exported 580,000 tons of chicken products to China last year, accounting for 73.4 percent of total chicken imports, according to figures from China's Ministry of Commerce.