Chinese poultry workers get their teeth into the job
The reputation of Chinese poultry is now in tatters after health officials, acting on a tip-off, raided a food-processing plant in the south-western city of Chengdu, to discover workers were using their teeth to debone chicken feet.
Fortunately, poultry is one of the Chinese products banned from the EU since January, when chloramphenicol, a powerful antibiotic, was found in Chinese imports.
Chinese authorities say the ban is costing them billions in lost exports, and is causing widespread hardship in rural areas.
Officials said they found two women gnawing at chicken claws beside a basket full of bones, in the Chengdu processing plant.
One worker told the officials that deboning by teeth was efficient.
The common practice at the plant was to half-boil the feet in water, slit them with a knife and remove the bones with their teeth.
Officials closed the plant and confiscated more than 250kg of chicken feet after discovering traces of saliva. Some workers carried Hepatitis B, which can be spread by body fluids.
The incident reinforces Irish farmers’ calls for Government and EU action, to subject food imports to the same quality procedures observed in the EU food industry.
Poultry meat imports to Ireland increased sharply since the mid-1990s, to more than 65m.
This meat could have come from any country in the world, and reached this country labelled as the product of whatever EU country it landed in for further processing.
The Irish Poultry Producers Association (IPPA) recently expressed concerns at reports of chicken containing banned substances imported into the Irish market.
“We are appalled at these findings,” said IPPA spokesman Vincent Carton, “the substances mentioned, nitrofurans and chloramphenicol, are banned in the EU and antibiotics of this nature are certainly not permitted under any circumstances in Irish poultry. These findings demonstrate once again that consumers must be more aware of the origin of the poultry they are buying so they can be confident of its safety”.
