WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives may be headed for a confrontation with the Senate and Obama administration regarding the issue by chicken imports from China.
The $123.8 billion bill passed July 9 by a vote of 260-161 with no significant changes from the measure voted out of the House Appropriations Committee, It covers farm programs, food stamps, food safety, agricultural research and other agriculture-related programs for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The Senate has not taken up the bill, but the Senate Appropriations Committee has passed its version.
The House bill extends a two-year ban on the importation of processed poultry meat from China, but the Senate version of the bill contains a provision that would allow the imports if China takes certain "special measures" to ensure the safety of the meat.
Ban support
House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the author of the ban, told reporters after the vote that she still favors the ban and plans to hold a hearing in July on the broader issue of how the U.S. government declares that plants in foreign countries have "equivalent" food safety inspection, which makes food products eligible for importation.
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DeLauro said that because countries have complained to the World Trade Organization that the United States is not living up to its own trade agreements, the hearing also will focus on food safety language in trade agreements.
China has brought a case against the United States over the chicken issue. DeLauro said the reason she has pushed for the ban on Chinese chicken imports is that USDA's proposed rule was so obviously written to please China so that it would restore imports of U.S. beef, which had been banned because of concerns about mad cow disease in the United States.
DeLauro said China offered U.S. inspectors three plants to visit, and even in those preselected, USDA's own researchers found problems with salmonella, contamination by grease and blood and unclean slaughter conditions. DeLauro also noted that FDA has stopped 547 shipments of other kinds of food from China since January.
"I am not in favor of changing the ban until we change the process" for equivalency, DeLauro said.
Ban concerns
The Obama administration said in its statement of administration policy on the House bill that it had "concerns" about the ban and would like to work with Congress to resolve the conflict between food safety and trade obligations.
The Senate version of the fiscal year 2010 Agriculture appropriations bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee passed July 7 contains a provision that would allow the imports if the agriculture secretary commits in advance to conduct audits of inspection systems, on-site reviews of slaughter and processing facilities, laboratories and other control operations before any Chinese facilities are certified as eligible to ship fully cooked poultry products to the United States, a spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture Appropriations Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said July 8.
House Agriculture Appropriations ranking member Jack Kingston, D-Ga., prepared an amendment to the House bill to overturn the ban, but the House Rules Committee did not put it in order.
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Kingston told DeLauro the Senate bill's language is the same as the compromise language, a Kingston spokes-
man said.
"It will be settled in conference," the Kingston spokesman added.
