China and U.S. call each other cheats over chicken

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

China is the world's largest consumer of pork and also the United States' largest customer for chicken exports.

Which makes China's duties on U.S. sourced chicken that much more serious. In 2009, before anti-dumping tariffs took effect in September, the United States sold more than 600,000 metric tonnes of chicken to China. More than US$1 billion in sales will have been lost by the end of this year, according to a U.S. Trade Representative release.

The United States filed its complaint about the tariffs with the World Trade Organization on Sept. 20. The United States and China must try to settle the dispute over the following two months.

The United States has described China's methodology for calculating dumping as "seriously flawed." Chinese authorities charged that chicken exports benefitted from subsidies such as support prices for soybeans and corn. Canadian farmers may be quietly applauding this claim.

The American chicken industry is not having a good time. In August, Tyson Foods asked producers in Carroll County Arkansas to reduce the weights of the birds they shipped by one pound to address an oversupply issue. At about the same time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the United States Department of Agriculture's intention to buy US$40 million worth of chicken for federal food nutrition assistance programs, including food banks. Over supply is only one stress on growers. Another is high feed costs. BF