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September 21, 2009

Playing chicken with China

By ARMAND NARDI, Register Publisher The Daily Register Mon Sep 21, 2009, 01:39 PM CDT

Brewing over President Barack Obama’s 35 percent tariff on tires imported from China, Beijing has retaliated with a hard stomp on our chicken feet.

Americans' distaste for the bony appendages has long forced U.S. chicken processors to peddle them in feet-friendlier markets, the biggest being China. It buys and eats an estimated $700 million in U.S. chicken each year -- half of it in feet alone.

Tracking hefty profit margins to the poultry industry, chicken feet are worth only a few cents a pound in the United States. As delicacies in China, they fetch 60 cents to 80 cents a pound, a price that no other foreign market comes close to matching, according to industry experts.

The chicken dance may soon be ending. China, this week, launched an investigation into alleged anti-competitive practices by American chicken importers that could threaten chicken foot traffic to the Asian country.

Lamenting the escalating chicken-for-tires trade rift, Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council stated, "This is clearly a government-to-government dispute, and we're innocent bystanders getting caught in the middle." Potentially with a growing pile of chicken feet.

This might not be such a big problem if Americans showed more love for these wrinkly claws that braise beautifully in a black bean sauce. But Lobb says there's "just a very limited market for chicken feet in the U.S."

Dr. Paul Aho, an international agribusiness economist specializing in the poultry industry states, “We have these jumbo, juicy paws the Chinese really love, so I don’t think they are going to cut us off.”

Dr. Aho explains the big chicken feet are the result of American’s preference for white chicken meat. “A bird bred for big breasts is necessarily bred to have big, strong feet and legs,” he said. “The United States is by far the world’s leading supplier of king-size chicken feet.”

Despite China’s fondness for American chicken, the trade has been riddled with problems since 2004, when the countries banned each other’s poultry products after an outbreak of bird flu. China quickly lifted its ban, but the United States did not, because of continued concerns about the safety of Chinese chicken.

There is an option for those hoping to protect American poultry producers from the crossfire – They could always launch a massive marketing campaign targeting U.S. citizens to eat more chicken feet. I can visualize the ads now - Bring them to your next potluck, serve them as hors d'oeuvres at your next cocktail party or simply tuck a few in your kids' lunch boxes.

Armand Nardi is the publisher of the Gainesville Daily Register. He can be contacted at anardi@ntin.net.

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