Thailand resumes frozen chicken meat export to China

BANGKOK - Thailand resumed frozen chicken meat export to China on Thursday as the first shipment of meat with 14 containers are ready to be exported to China's Yunnan province.

The first shipment of chicken meat are worth around 35 million baht ($1.1 million), according to Thai media.

China banned poultry imports from Thailand since an outbreak of bird flu in Thailand in 2004.

Ren Yisheng, China's Consul General to Thailand's Chiang Mai, and Niwat Sutemechaikul, Deputy Secretary of Thailand's Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry, along with some 500 officials, businessmen from both countries attended a ceremony to mark the event at a port in Chiang Mai.

The trade between China and Thailand keeps growing steadily as China is now Thailand's biggest trade partner and third largest source of investment, Ren said during the ceremony.

"China has been closely following the development of control systems of the poultry industry and devoted to approving the imported chicken from Thailand as early as possible," Ren said, adding that seven Thai companies have been approved to export frozen chicken meat to China again.

Niwat said chicken farming is an important industry of Thai economy and chicken meat accounts for 85 percent of all kinds of meat exported to the world from the country.

Thailand has been upgrading its poultry farming system to make the exports meet international standards, he said.

Thailand thanks China for the approval and hopes China can import more frozen chicken meat and processed chicken meat from Thailand in the future, Niwat said.

The Certification and Accreditation Administration of China approved the import of frozen chicken meat from Thailand earlier this month.