All the political talk about tariffs and a trade war with China may have an effect on a lot of goods—but chicken are not one of them. Currently, the US buys no chickens from China. We raise 99% of all the chickens we process right here in the US. In fact, we are the largest chicken producer in the world and the second largest poultry exporter after Brazil. That’s because we are the best at it and have the safest food supply in the world.
On the other side of the coin—the US ships NO raw CHICKEN to China. Why? Because, China already has a ban on US poultry which stems from another disagreement that happened years ago. Even though our poultry is so much safer than the poultry grown in China, and even if China wanted to ship chickens into the US, they would not be able to compete with our US growers. China’s poultry industry isn’t nearly as integrated or technologically advanced as the US poultry industry.
Currently, China is facing a protein shortage and that may change things and open the doors for the US to start exporting chickens to them. The reason being, the Chinese are a huge pork eating country and currently the African Swine Flu has killed a large part of the pork population. Now, even though there is all this talk that China will soon be possibly lifting the ban on importing US chickens—Americans WILL NOT be paying any tariffs on chickens—–that’s a fact.
CEO Rogers Poultry, George Saffarrans