No Spring Chicken

Illegal growth hormones found in poultry roils China’s food processing industry By Zhou Xiaoyan

Some poultry farmers in east China’s Shandong Province were found to have used excessive amounts of growthboosting drugs in their chickens, which were then supplied to fast-food giants like KFC, raising further concerns in the country over food safety and the lack of severe penalties for violators.

The Chinese public is already accustomed to food and drug scandals, including tainted milk, illegally recycled waste cooking oil, toxic capsules and exploding watermelons. Those scandals have harmed the credibility of the country’s food producers and grated consumers’ nerves.

The chicken scandal has caused a growing number of Chinese consumers to question the credibility of chicken farmers. Government officials have pledged to intensify supervision of the poultry-raising industry. On the other hand,the industry may be reshuf fl ed as the price of local drug-free chickens soars.

Drugged chicken

On December 18, China Central Television(CCTV), the country’s national television station, reported that several Shandong-located chicken farms fed anti-biotics and hormones to chickens every day to reduce their death rate and quicken their growth.

Hormones, anti-biotics and anti-viral drugs,were all fed to the chickens to compensate for the unsanitary conditions in their cages, according to the CCTV report.

The owner of one of the farms says he gave the chickens at least 18 kinds of anti-biotics.Within a mere 40 days, the chickens’ weight would surge upward of 3 kg.

To make matters worse, the chickens were found to be given drugs banned by the State Food and Drug Administration of China (SFDA).

According to the report, some chickens were fed anti-biotics two days before slaughter.China’s poultry-raising regulations state that chickens cannot be given drugs at least one week before being slaughtered to ensure the drugs are no longer in their systems.

Two such farms in Gaomi and Pingdu,both in east China’s Shandong Province, sold their chickens to a slaughterhouse in Pingdu,which belongs to Liuhe Group, the company that provides chicken to the China division of Yum Brands of Shanghai, which owns the KFC fast-food chain. Yum’s logistics center then delivered the chicken to its fast-food stores, said the report.

Companies belonging to Liuhe Group also fabricated feeding logs for their chicken farms and produced quarantine qual ifi cations without conducting any tests, said the report.

On December 21, the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration conducted a food safety check at KFC outlets. It found that one of 32 samples taken from eight batches of Yum Brands’ raw chicken was suspected to be contaminated with the anti-viral medicine amantadine, which is banned for use in food.

The Shanghai food and drug authority has asked Yum to recall related products from its KFC restaurants and has launched a citywide inspection of KFC outlets.

Yum Brands Inc., the world’s largest restaurant group, is believed to have known about the anti-biotics in its chicken as far back as 2010.Beijing Reviewwas unable to reach Yum Brands for comment.

McDonald’s and the Japanese fast-food chain Yoshinoya have also been embroiled in the chicken scandal.

On December 23, the Beijing Animal Inspection authority uncovered that 23 restaurants or food companies bought chicken from Liuhe Group, including Yoshinoya. Some dishes incorporating chicken have been withdrawn from sale at Yoshinoya restaurants in Beijing,reported the Xinhua News Agency.

On December 26, McDonald’s admitted that the Liuhe Group was its second-tier supplier. It claims to have stopped using raw chicken from Liuhe since December 18.

During a press conference held on December 25, Bi Meijia, spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), said that relevant poultry raisers and processors have been shut down and are currently under investigation. The MOA has dispatched a group of experts to Shandong Province to inspect the matter, he said.

“In the future, we will provide more oversight to the poultry-raising industry and intensify our efforts to punish those who feed animals excessive amounts of anti-biotics and veterinary drugs,” he said. Those found to be violating laws and standards will be punished.

TROUBLED FOOD MOGUL: A KFC outlet in Shanghai

Local breeds preferred

Change is filtering through China’s poultryraising industry following the chicken scandal.

Chickens that are raised in a natural environment are considered more nutritious.The scandal has boosted the market demand for local drug-free chicken and will likely bring dramatic changes to China’s poultry industry,according to theChinese Business Times, a Beijing-based daily newspaper.

Recently, the price of local drug-free chicken has soared to 21 yuan ($3.37)per kg, up from 14-15 yuan ($2.25-2.4)per kg, the standard price for years, according to theChinese Business Times.

There are three types of chicken in the Chinese market.

The first type is white feather chicken,which is dubbed “instant chicken” since its growth period is around 45 days.

China imported the white feather chicken from foreign countries in the 1980s and has become one of the three biggest white feather chicken producers worldwide after three decades of popularizing the breed. White feather chicken accounts for over half of the Chinese market and over 90 percent of the U.S. chicken meat market.

The second type is a hybrid of foreign white feather chicken and Chinese local chicken,which accounts for nearly 30 percent of the market share. The growth period for a hybrid chicken is 60-90 days.

The third type is traditional and local Chinese chicken, with a growth period of some 180 days.

Farmers must raise white feather chicken according to regulations, Shu Congxuan, head of the Hefei Poultry Association, toldChina Times, a financial weekly newspaper based in Beijing.

“Due to the shorter growth period, white feather chickens are more likely to get sick.So raisers have to feed them anti-biotics to keep them healthy. But the amount is strictly restricted by law and raisers mustn’t feed them anti-biotics for seven days before they are slaughtered,” he said.

Some farmers raise more chickens without expanding the chicken coop accordingly. The chickens are then crowded in a limited space,increasing their vulnerability to germs. In order to reduce their chances of dying as a result, raisers fed white feather chicken anti-biotics every day.

“The safety of chicken meat is a systematic issue that goes through the whole industrial chain, including poultry, the production of the fodder, slaughtering and logistics,” Gong Guifen,Deputy Secretary General of China Poultry Association, toldChina Times. “The abuse of anti-biotics will harm consumers as the medicine remains in the chicken meat. Once a major food safety incident breaks out, all the companies in this sector will be in fl uenced.”

After the CCTV exposure, the price of white feather chicken slumped to 7 yuan ($1.12)per kg on December 21 from 9.8 yuan ($1.57)per kg in previous months, according to theChinese Business Times.

Joint supervision needed

From the time a chicken is raised on a farm to the time it lands on a dinner table, several government departments are involved, including the MOA, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Health and the SFDA.

The SFDA believes that an excessive use of anti-biotics is a matter for the MOA. The MOA,on the other hand, claims that its responsibility lies only in the production process, and says the onus is on other ministries for dealing with traces of anti-biotics, writes theNanfang Daily.

Finger pointing then becomes the norm,and it is imperative that the responsibilities of each department are clear stated when it comes to ensuring food safety, said the report.

The chicken scandal exposed the weakness of a market economy, said Mei Xinyu, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

“In a market economy, companies are driven by pro fi ts, which explains the abuse of antibiotics in the poultry industry,” said Mei. “When the market fails, the government, or other intermediary organs, should step up and apply the strictest supervision to reign in companies.”

In the United States when McDonald’s cups were found to contain excessive cadmium in June 2010, the company immediately recalled 12 million of those cups and apologized to the public.

However, when a similar scandal breaks out in China in the fast food industry, none of the companies step up to apologize to the public. The penalty for violating the law is thin. According to the country’s Food Recall Regulation, KFC is only required to pay a fi ne of 30,000 yuan ($4,821).