China slaps anti-dumping deposit on Brazilian chicken

China will impose temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of Brazilian chicken meat, it said this week, at the same time as the US pressures Beijing to reopen its market to American poultry products.

Chinese importers of Brazilian chicken will be required to pay deposits ranging from 18.8pc to 38.4pc of the value of their shipments from June 9, the commerce ministry said in a statement.

A preliminary ruling from the ministry found that Chinese producers had been “substantially damaged” by shipments from Brazil between 2013 and 2016, when the country supplied more than half of China’s imports of chicken meat.

The anti-dumping measures are another blow to Brazilian meatpackers, who are still recovering from a food safety scandal last year and a May truckers’ protest that forced farms to cull some 70m chickens due to a lack of feed.

They also show how third-party countries like Brazil, the world’s largest chicken exporter, could become collateral damage as the United States and China look for ways to head off a trade war…