What Foods Are Imported From China?
What Foods Are Imported From China?
The growing share of imported foods in U.S. supermarkets and restaurants presents new challenges for food safety regulators and private decision makers (Becker, 2008b). While the U.S. food supply is still overwhelmingly from domestic sources, the share of imported foods has grown steadily. The growing presence of imported foods reflects various trends: China is one of the most prominent examples of the emergence of a nontraditional supplier of food to the United States. China was the 11th-largest source of U.S. food imports. But in 2008, China was the third-largest Chinese supplier. The share of U.S. food (value) imported from China rose from about 2 percent in the 1990s to 5.8 percent in 2008.
The value of food imports from China was exceeded only by that of North American neighbors Canada and Mexico.
The rise in food imports from China reflects robust demand for these products as well as the eagerness of Chinese exporters to supply them. Chinese prices of fish, fruit, and vegetables are as low as one-fifth to one-tenth of those in the United States (Gale and Tuan).
Food imports from China include a broad range of items, but about three fourths fall into a few broad categories: fish and shellfish, juices, canned fruits, and other fruit, vegetable, and nut products. Few unprocessed perishable foods are imported from China. Fish and shellfish (mostly frozen and prepared products) are the largest and fastest growing category of foods imported from China. In 2008, fish and shellfish imports accounted for 41 percent of the value of food imported from China. Fish and shellfish also accounted for 32 percent of the growth in Chinese food imports
Most of China wholesale products come from factories in coastal provinces that process fish and shellfish raised in ponds, lakes, or reservoirs tended by small-scale farmers.
Fruits, vegetables, nuts, juices and other fruit and vegetable products account for about a third of the value of U.S. food imports from China.
Other vegetables imported from China include dried and canned black and kidney beans, peas, peppers, and vegetables, like pickled radish, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and napa cabbage used in Chinese cuisine. China wholesale products includes a wide array of items, like tea, noodles, and vegetable saps and extracts (most of which appear to have nonfood uses6), ginseng, pastries, baked goods, soy sauce, tofu, beer, and liquor. Many of these items are Chinese specialty foods, like Chinese brands of beer and liquor, Chinese-style snacks, and cooking ingredients, that are likely sold through Asian specialty stores or restaurants. Some are used in Chinese traditional medicines or consumed as nutritional supplements.
China is also emerging as a source of ingredients used in food processing.
Source: ERS/USDA
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