China may restrict US chicken imports
- Source: Global Times
- [07:51 September 01 2009]
- Comments
A poultry farm in Eastern China's Jiangsu Province. Photo: CFP
By Chen Yang
China's poultry industry is planning to initiate an anti-dumping case against the United States to restrict the importation of unfairly priced chicken, according to a senior official with the China Animal Agriculture Association (CAAA) yesterday.
"The US has been exporting large amounts of low-priced poultry products like chicken wings, drumsticks and claws that Americans do not consume," Ma Chuang, deputy secretary-general of China Animal Agriculture Association, told the Global Times yesterday.
"America also doesn't allow any importation of chicken from China. It is quite unreasonable," he added.
According to figures from the United States Department of Agriculture, the US exported 330,000 tons of chicken to China in 2008.
The domestic chicken price is about 13,000 yuan ($1,903) per ton, while the imported chicken from the US is no more than 6,000 yuan ($878.42) per ton, Liu Feng, sales manager of Zhucheng Foreign Trade Company in Shandong Province, told China Business Newspaper early July.
Ma said imported chicken from the US, which makes up 60 to 80 percent of the total chicken imports to China, shares about 10 percent of the domestic chicken market.
Figures from CAAA show that Chinese companies produced about 5.9 million tons of chicken of the white feather breed in 2008, yet these companies only realized 67 percent of their productivity.
"China only imposes a tariff of about 5 percent and a 13.6 percent value added tax on the imported chicken, which still does not offset the price differences between home-grown and imported chicken," he said.
When asked about consumers' worries that chicken prices might go up if the restriction is implemented, Ma said China has enough productivity to satisfy the domestic demand, adding that the growth cycle for the white feather breed of chicken is just six to seven weeks. "Consumers don't need to worry about the chicken prices," he noted.
"The Ministry of Commerce will treat the appeal from the poultry industry seriously and deal with it in accordance with related laws," an official from the ministry who declined to be named told the Global Times.
