Will Chinese chickens come into the U.S. as deadly bird flu expands?

Will this deadly Chinese bird flu be crossing U.S. borders?

It looked like a scene from a Stephen King movie.

Hazmat-suited doctors were gathered around a seriously ill patient quarantined in a hospital room. One was on a walkie-talkie speaking to another outside a thick glass pane sealing off the space where the man with H7N9 avian flu was being treated.

That scene happened earlier this year in China. But don’t think you’re safe just because you live on the other side of the world.

In a move that many consider an invitation to disaster, U.S. officials have practically put out a welcome mat for this deadly strain of flu.

And staying safe — or not — may all come down to what you have for dinner.

———————————————————————-
Just a first step?
———————————————————————-

The only good thing you could say about the H7N9 avian flu is that it was almost entirely confined to chickens. But that all changed this year when the number of poultry workers in China who came down with it increased sixfold.

Then, Chinese health officials confirmed 14 cases of not just people who caught it from chickens — but person-to-person transmission.

So why in the world would we pick now to consider bringing in an influx of chickens that are not only processed but actually raised in China?

A few months ago, I told you about one of the most absurd trade agreements ever hatched.

It goes like this: We raise and slaughter chickens in the U.S., and then we ship them to China, where they get processed, cooked, and shipped back to America.

I know, you can’t make this stuff up.

The whole plan was to make nice with China so it would, once again, take our beef imports.

And while the whole thing sounds crazy, we were assured by the USDA that it’s super safe, as those chickens would be so carefully cooked that not one tiny microbe could possibly survive.

But aside from the fact that China has been plagued with a lengthy history of food contamination problems, it looks like the idea of only sending us back cooked birds was just a first step.

Practically buried in a news report about these jet-setting chickens was the fact that allowing China to process American-raised birds may have only been the opening gambit in a bid to sell us both hatched and bred Chinese poultry (including both chickens and ducks).

In fact, information that leaked out of joint economic talks that took place just a few months ago shows that the U.S. agreed to begin that process “as soon as possible.”

And get this! The USDA even proposed a rule that reportedly would allow Chinese-bred birds to be shipped here in the form of chicken nuggets! That nugget deal could be finalized before the end of this year, aligning right with the growing threat of the H7N9 virus possibly becoming a pandemic.

As I said earlier this year, it’s impossible to say where these Chinese chickens might eventually land. They could show up in your favorite supermarket, restaurant, or take-out place.

The only way to steer clear of this foreign fowl is to make sure that you don’t consume (or even touch!) any chicken that wasn’t raised and processed in America — and to only buy raw poultry from U.S. organic-certified farms.

And don’t even think about going near another chicken nugget unless it’s something you made from scratch!

Because when there’s an economic fox in the henhouse and a deadly bird virus on the move, you can’t be too careful about where the chickens you touch were hatched.