Signal to Noise: A Wake Up Call in a Bag of Dead Chickens

Written by: John Herath
Published by: Ag Web

News that a bag of dead birds was seized from a passenger arriving in the U.S. from China raised a number of red flags for Cong. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) who is in the rare position of sitting on both the Agriculture and Intelligence Committees in the House. What scares the congressman is what we don’t know about those birds because of outdated protocols.

“‘I’ve been in contact with CDP (Customs and Border Patrol) and USDA and unfortunately we’re victims of policy that probably did not anticipate this type of thing,” Crawford told DC Signal to Noise. “So they were, by their policy, just required to incinerate those birds without exploiting any any kind of potential intelligence they could extract from these and doing the pathology on these dead animals and being able to say just exactly what was contained in those dead birds and was it a threat?”

As Crawford pointed out in the DC Signal to Noise Podcast, the suspicious birds come about a year after a million pounds of illegal pork from China was stopped at the border.

In this week’s podcast, Crawford details his plans to push for updated policies to adequately control and investigate biosecurity issues at the border.

Crawford also gives an update on trade issues, the possibility of a new Market Facilitation Program and more.