CONCERNS ARE RAISED ABOUT THE QUALITY OF POULTRY PRODUCTS COMING INTO CARICOM COUNTRIES
Written by Caribbean Hotfm on June 8, 2018
The United States on Wednesday sought to assure consumers in Trinidad and Tobago that they could eat poultry products from the North American country with “full confidence” after a senior official of the Trinidad and Tobago Poultry Association (TTPA) warned that substandard meat could enter the island as a result of a campaign by American poultry farmers to flood the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) market.
TTPA president Robert Phillip earlier this week said that the local industry could be decimated if it is not protected from a ramped-up campaign by the USA Poultry and Egg Council to send millions of tons of chicken, turkey and duck, and billions of eggs into the CARICOM market. Phillip appealed to the government to implement the Poultry and Poultry Products CARICOM Standard, passed in 2012, to prevent substandard meat from entering the local market.
But in a statement, the US Embassy in Trinidad said that local consumers can eat US poultry with full confidence. “The United States takes food safety very seriously. All U.S. exports of poultry must, by law, be inspected and only poultry produced in federally-inspected plants and receiving the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) mark of inspection can be exported.”
The Embassy said that products exported to Trinidad and Tobago “are held to the same food safety standards as are products produced for the U.S. domestic market
