In April 2013, Chinese authorities in the southwestern Guizhou province came across a strange smelling load of chicken feet. The inspectors later realised that they had stumbled upon more than eight tons of toxic chicken, marinated in poisonous peroxide liquid and other chemicals. The chicken was intended for the Chinese market.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security the seizure was part of a three-month campaign ending in May that targeted the black meat market of China and resulted in 482 criminal cases and the arrest of 904 meat meddlers.

The campaign only exposed a fraction of multimillion-dollar industry. China’ s billion large population craves meat, and high domestic prices and the introduction of a 100 per cent tariff have created a massive black market for all sorts of potentially hazardous meat. Among those, chicken is king.

“ What’ s being smuggled the most to China?” Liu Yonghao, a member of the CPPCC, the main political advisory body in China, asked rhetorically on government radio last year.“ Some may say computers or gold or jewellery. But it’ s chicken.”

Yonghau based his claims on a previous string of government seizures of illegally imported chicken, in total amounting to more than 1,000 tons, at a value of more than $ 50 million.

One Suzhou firm was caught tampering with its papers and illegally importing all-American chicken wings. In an earlier seizure, 700 tons of smuggled meat, most of it chicken feet, was destroyed.

The recent seizures only unveiled the tip of an iceberg of frozen poultry.

Peyton Ferrier, an expert on food smuggling with the US Department of Agriculture, says the recovered material has exposed only the absolute minimum level of the illegal trade.

Articles in the Chinese press, have suggested that 600,000 to 800,000 tons of chicken are allegedly smuggled through Hong Kong and into main land China every year.

It might seem suspicious that China, the world’ s largest export economy, hosts a market for smuggled food from across the Pacific. But China’ s economic boom has created a demand, especially for chicken feet- considered an unappetising byproduct in the Americas and Europe- and a delicacy in China, that domestic producers have been struggling to meet.

To the disgust of the Chinese authorities, American, Brazilian and British farmers and companies have been more than happy to ship their products, especially the usually unprofitable chicken feet, overseas, cashing in on the higher prices of poultry in China compared to the USA.

In 2010, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce decided to halt the legal imports by imposing what they referred to as‘ antidumping tariffs’ ranging between 43 to 105 per cent on imports of chicken from the USA, feet included, thereby creating an incentive for the chicken smugglers.

“ If country A exports to country B regularly, then a ban or barrier on trade lowers the price in A and raises it in B. This price wedge is the incentive to smuggle,” explains Ferrier.

Although China is a net importer of legal and illegal poultry, Chinese

chickens also finds their way to countries where the demand, and the prices, are even higher than in China. One of these countries is Vietnam, where in April border authorities intercepted a large quantity of‘ waste chicken’ – aged and unprofitable hens no longer laying eggs.

The seizure caused general alarm among the Vietnamese health services. In February and March, an outbreak of a new bird flu, the H7N9 virus, killed 18 people in China. Most of them in the eastern and southern provinces.

The Vietnamese authorities decided to impose a ban on import of Chinese poultry to keep the virus out of the country, leaving Chinese producers to sell their products on the black market.

Fortunately, no cases of H7N9 have been reported in Vietnam, but the case reflects the risks of the unregulated, worldwide chicken market.

According to Ferrier:“ There are risks to human health; the introduction and spread of contagious diseases. There are risks to plant and animal health. There are risks to the environment. And finally, there are negative trade effects.”

// Jakob Jessen

nathaniel stamper

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