Joining several other food and agricultural associations, ASA signed a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Ambassador Mike Froman in February, expressing concern about the Chinese new “test and hold” requirements on the import of U.S. pork, calling the decision “unwarranted and extraordinarily disappointing.”

The groups stated that the requirements, “will undoubtedly disrupt U.S. pork sales to one of our most important export markets and could significantly undermine the food safety and animal health and welfare of the U.S. pork industry.”

The letter asked Vilsack and Froman to actively engage with China to eliminate these new requirements and adopt a science-based maximum residue levels (MRLs) for the import of U.S. pork in order to avoid disrupting mutually beneficial trade.

“By way of background, on January 9, 2014, the Chinese government’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIS) wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), calling on USDA to quickly implement additional USDA oversight for ensuring ractopamine free pork,” the letter states. “During the month of January, USDA officials worked closely with the U.S. pork industry in developing several options to achieve China’s request. On February 6, 2014, FSIS Administrator Alfred Almanza wrote a letter to AQSIQ informing the agency that USDA was prepared to implement a USDA certification system guaranteeing that U.S. pork shipped to China has either been tested for ractopamine or originates from animals produced under the “Never Fed Beta-Agonists” program.”

The groups wrote they are appreciative of the work USDA undertook on very short notice to address China’s concerns regarding ractopamine. As FSIS Administrator Almanza noted in his February 6, 2014, letter, while the United States is willing to implement such a certification program to avoid a disruption in U.S. pork exports to China, it is extremely important that China, as a more permanent solution to this matter, adopt the Codex Alimentarius MRL for ractopamine in pork production. As the Codex, the United States, and many other countries around the world recognize, ractopamine is a completely safe product for use in pork production.

“With the assurances provided in Administrator Almanza’s letter, we fully expected China will cease a “test and hold” policy on U.S. pork that it implemented in January.  However, we were dismayed to learn last week that China is testing and holding all U.S. pork not only for ractopamine, but also for detection of three approved veterinary drugs commonly used in U.S. pork production, and used in many other pork producing countries: tetracycline hydrochloride, oxytetracyline and sulfathiazole.”

According to the letter, the loss of the ability to use these veterinary drugs, similar to what has happened with ractopamine, would threaten the safety of U.S. pork as well as the high herd health status and welfare of the U.S. swine herd.

“We need to defend not only safe new technologies, but also proven technologies.  We urge you to take every possible action to convince the Chinese government to reverse this unwarranted action immediately, and rather, press China to adopt import MRLs for U.S. pork based on science, the groups stated. “Specifically we recommend that China adopt the Codex or FDA MRLs for tetracycline and oxtetracycline.  We further recommend that China adopt the FDA MRLs for sulfonamides, including sulfathiazole, which are consistent with the Codex MRL for sulfadimidine.”