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Washington, May 26 – Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack explained Wednesday that in response to concerns raised
by China about U.S. soybean quality, USDA Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign
Agricultural Services Jim Miller “talked to his counterpart and there is an
agreement to essentially provide better communication, cooperation and better
coordination on standards concerning soybeans.”
Vilsack
said that to deal with China’s
continuing quality concerns “we have made the offer to send a technical team to
China
to make sure that the standards are right, the grading process is correct, and
we think that that will alleviate some of the
concerns that have been expressed.” He added that while he doesn’t
believe there have been actual quality problems, “we need to keep
communicating. It’s not different than a lot of the other issues that have been
raised here recently. We just need to get technical people over there and sit
down with their folks and just walk them through the science and how we grade
things.”
Vilsack
pointed out that along with soybean issues, while the Under Secretary is in China,
Miller “will no doubt discuss what additional steps need to be taken on beef.”
Vilsack also noted that poultry will be on Miller’s agenda: “We’re obviously
trying to continue the dialogue there and try to reassure the Chinese that what
we’re asking for as we deal with the congressional directive on poultry, that
what we’re asking for is not something new, it’s just an updated amount of
information so that we can continue the process of making sure that poultry
that comes from China is going to be safe.”
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