Russia Bans Imports of USA Chicken

Industrial meat is taking a pounding (no pun intended) in overseas markets.


Russia banned imports of U.S. poultry from Jan. 1. Imports cleared by customs before Jan. 19 are permitted.

Russia cites the use of chlorine as the reason for the ban. Consumer protection watchdog Rospotrebnadzor says the presence of chlorine in water used to cool poultry results in "the accumulation of by-products dangerous to human health" in and on the surface of the meat.

U.S. meat firms routinely use chlorine to kill bacteria that cause food poisoning. The country says the process is safe.

Russia restricts the use of chlorine in poultry plants to 0.5 parts per million.

If Cows Could Fly

CAFOs come in all species.

In Maryland, how to handle the 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in the state each year has sparked a fierce debate between environmentalists and the state’s powerful poultry industry. State officials hope to bring Maryland in line with most other states next month by enacting new rules for where, how and how long chicken farmers can spread the manure on their fields or store it in outdoor piles.

“We don’t let hog or dairy farms spread their waste unregulated, and we wouldn’t let a town of 25,000 people dump human manure untreated on open lands,” said Gerald W. Winegrad, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland who is a former state senator. “So why should we allow a farm with 150,000 chickens do it?”

As the amount of cropland in Maryland has shrunk and the number of chickens raised has grown to 570 million, these mountains of manure have become a liability because the excess is washing into the Chesapeake Bay, one of the nation’s most polluted estuaries, and further worsening the plight of the fishermen who ply its waters.

Would you like a little manure runoff with your crabs or oysters? Oh, wait a minute, there are hardly any crabs and oysters left in the Chesapeake. And that's not BS, or whatever the equivalent of chicken poop might be. It's the result of pollution runoff from rivers and streams, no different than the giant dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico or off the coast in the Pacific Northwest.

Read the rest of the story. In Maryland, Focus on Poultry Industry Pollution