000409 Contaminated U.S. Poultry Seized In RussiaApril 8, 2000Moscow - Russian veterinary authorities have seized two rail cars carrying frozen U.S. chicken leg quarters believed to be contaminated with a chemical compound, the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council said. The council said in a statement that the chicken was part of a shipment of food aid sent to Russia from the United States. The two rail cars seized were among 10 cars in the Tver region, some 200 kilometres northwest of Moscow. The poultry was certified as safe by the U.S. Department of Agriculture before leaving the U.S., and by German and Russian veterinary inspectors while on the way to Russia across Germany. In Germany the poultry was loaded into refrigerated Russian rail cars for the final leg of the journey across Lithuania and Latvia to St Petersburg. U.S. and Russian investigators are now trying to establish where the food was contaminated. A spokesman for the USA poultry and Egg Export Council in Moscow said that the U.S. accounted for 80 percent of all poultry imported to Russia according to official statistics. He said Russia imported between 250,000 and 270,000 tonnes of frozen U.S. chicken last year. But this was well below the record 1997 figure of around 800,000 tonnes worth some $800 million. Imports have slumped since a financial crisis in August 1998. Russia was given huge volumes of frozen chicken in the early 1990s in donations from the United States during the presidency of George Bush, and frozen chicken pieces are still generally known as “Bush's legs” in Russia.
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