Chicken scandal: are we being fed lies?

(Ecns.cn) -- China's chicken breeding industry is under attack for widespread lack of supervision and irresponsible practices by poultry farmers, reports China Youth Daily, but the problems are deeply systemic and difficult to solve.

The criticism began when fast food giant KFC, which is owned by the Yum Brands conglomerate, was accused of serving chickens that had been improperly fed various types of drugs, some of which fattened the birds at an alarming rate.

Last week, China Central Television (CCTV) reported that several Shandong poultry farms had fed their chickens antibiotics and hormones every day. The report also said that chickens had been fed antibiotics just two days before slaughter, yet regulations stipulate that antibiotic use must be stopped a week before chickens are processed.

Unlike the highly integrated chicken enterprises of the United States, 90 percent of China's chicken companies get their poultry from independent farmers. This makes the industry hard to effectively regulate, writes China Youth Daily.

The Shandong Liuhe Group is a typical example. Its primary operations include animal feed manufacture, meat processing and cooking, livestock breeding and animal production, according to the company's official website.

Most of Liuhe's contract farmers squeeze thousands of chickens into crudely built coops with simple facilities. Under normal conditions, one coop accommodates 3,000 chickens, giving them enough space to grow, but Liuhe's farmers often cram 5,000 to 6,000 chickens together, says the newspaper.

Under such crowded circumstances, chickens are more prone to disease, and because of higher temperatures and humidity they are much more likely to die prematurely.

"Poultry farmers usually earn about 1 yuan (US$0.16) from selling a chicken, so they will do anything to prevent sick chickens from dying," says Mr. Li, who works in the field of veterinary medicine.

"To remain profitable they are forced to abuse antibiotics, and sometimes they use hormones to shorten the growth cycles of chickens in order to reduce the risk of losses," he adds.

And because the interests of chicken companies are bound to the interests of their contract farmers, food safety inspections basically exist in name only, insiders say.

"Few chickens are checked, because the sampling rate is very low," says Mr. Hao, who once worked for Liuhe Group. "Big companies carry out the inspections themselves, and because they have insufficient personnel, less than five out of every 5,000 chickens are usually sampled."

Moreover, to secure profit growth, Liuhe Group sells veterinary drugs to their contract farmers directly, and takes considerable kickbacks from drug suppliers, reports China Business News.

With demand for antibiotic-filled animal feed constantly rising, feed mills must continually increase the amounts of medicine to cope with drug resistance. This drags poultry farmers into a vicious circle, forcing them to buy more effective feeds to ensure the survival of their chickens.

Meanwhile, quarantine authorities are hindered because of a limited scope of inspection. In Shandong Province, for example, there are more than 1.64 million poultry farms above a certain size, but there are only about 1,200 livestock inspection sites.

The "company-plus-farmers" mode that has taken over China's chicken breeding industry has created so many problems that they cannot be immediately tackled, points out China Youth Daily.

Experts say that China should learn from the U.S. and encourage the establishment of highly integrated chicken enterprises, as well as toughen up legislation and enforcement of chicken meat safety.