DeLauro: USDA Actions Are “Deeply Worrisome” for American Consumers

NEW HAVEN, CT – Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) today raised her strong objections to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s move to grant China's poultry processing plants standards of food safety equivalency to those in the United States.  As the former Chairwoman and current senior member of the subcommittee responsible for funding USDA, DeLauro has long fought to ensure trade does not trump public health and that unsafe poultry products from China do not enter the United States. 

"The fact that USDA, the agency charged with ensuring the poultry products the public consumes are safe, is green lighting the export of processed poultry products to the United States from a country with an atrocious food safety record should be deeply worrisome to American consumers.  The audit released today erases neither the fact that past inspections revealed unsanitary conditions at China's poultry processing plants nor the fact that U.S. inspectors will not be onsite at these plants going forward to ensure the exported products are safe.  Meanwhile, I remain deeply concerned that USDA appears to be heading down the same path with China's slaughtering plants, even as cases of bird flu deaths are reported out of that country.  Sadly, business interests, which are currently also attacking country-of-origin labeling so consumers do not even know where the meat they are consuming is coming from, are trumping the public interest."