Ted McKinney, U.S. Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, has been in Beijing this week for trade talks with China. One of his top priorities is to push China to drop a ban on U.S. poultry imports, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
China has recently removed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on U.S. broilers. However, China continues to have it borders closed to poultry products imported from the United States. China imports approximately $1 billion of poultry annually from other countries, including Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.
China consumes the largest amount of chicken feet in the world, eating more than what the country can produce itself. Chicken feet alone account for 60 percent or 300,000 tons.
In January 2015, China halted poultry imports from the U.S. after an outbreak of avian influenza was identified in chicken and turkey farms in the Midwest. Although the disease was controlled by May 2015, China’s ban on American chicken was never fully lifted.
Restrictions on U.S. poultry, along with China’s restricted import of grain, the resistance to genetically modified products and bans on the use of certain veterinary drugs and growth promotions deemed safe under international standards are listed as the top four challenges for U.S. agriculture exporters, according to USDA.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the administration is opposed to both China’s discriminatory tariffs and non-tariff barriers against American agricultural goods. President Trump sanctioned Chinese smartphone maker ZTE as leverage to push China into buying more agriculture products from the U.S. China is the second largest market for U.S. agriculture exports as of 2017, next to Canada, according to USDA.
