Quarantine officials in south China said yesterday they expected to
destroy 24 tons of bacteria-infected chicken imported from the
United States.
The detention of the poultry on Monday marked the second time in a
month that authorities in Huizhou in
Guangdong Province had detected E. coli O157 in US frozen
chicken.
Local quarantine officials said yesterday they expected to destroy
the chicken after notifying the US exporter.
On
December 11, the E. coli bug was found in 24 tons of frozen chicken
shipped from Atlanta in the southern US state of Georgia with the
registration code P-19378. Local authorities immediately burned and
buried the tainted chicken.
The two cases belong to the same batch of US chicken products,
according to Guangdong quarantine officials.
After last December's case, the State General Administration for
Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine notified the
United States and suspended the import of US frozen chicken with
the registration code P-19378.
But officials at the US Embassy in Beijing said yesterday they had
received no official response from the US Government and had no
comment on either of the two cases.
Local quarantine authorities said they had contacted the US
exporter - whom they did not name - but the US side has yet to make
a decision.
Tan Zhanglong, a division chief of the Huizhou Quarantine Bureau,
repeated his remarks of previous weeks when he said that the
temporary ban on imports of US frozen chicken would not affect
other US poultry exports to China.
(China
Daily January 10, 2002)