China's rejections of pork and poultry imports spike--sparked by trade friction?

China's border inspectors have been discovering a lot more problems with imported pork and poultry. There were few rejections of either type of meat until 2024 when rejections of imported pork spiked during July and October. Rejections of poultry soared during 2025. Rejections of both pork and poultry peaked at their highest ever levels of 2,000 metric tons in June 2025. 

Jan 2022-July 2025. Compiled from reports on China customs website.

China had never rejected more than a couple of hundred metric tons of pork in a month until July 2024, when inspectors turned away 1,000 metric tons. Rejections of pork rebounded to nearly 900 metric tons in October and remained at a high level in the first 7 months of 2025. China's pork rejections peaked at record-high 2,000 metric tons monthly in June and July 2025.  

Jan 2024-July 2025. Compiled from reports on China Customs website.

The increase in imported pork problems just happened to begin in July 2024, the month after China announced an anti-dumping investigation of pork from the European Union. Nearly all the pork rejected since then was supplied by companies in the two primary EU exporting countries Spain and Denmark, also the two main targets of antidumping duties announced this month. Denmark accounted for most pork rejections during 2024 and early 2025; Spain accounted for nearly all of the spike in rejections during June-July 2025. In 2025 a modest volume of Irish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Austrian pork shipments have been rejected. The U.S. was a distant third in rejections--coming primarily from Smithfield Foods. Shipments from the UK, Russia, Brazil and Canada were rejected in 2025.

(Pork from Germany, a leading EU producer, has been banned by China since September 2020 when the first outbreaks of African swine fever occurred in Germany.)

Chinese customs officials cited two main reasons for rejecting pork shipments: unspecified "animal disease" and testosterone. They rejected about 2,000 metric tons of pork for animal disease in both 2024 and 2025--most of it from Danish Crown suppliers. Some pork supplied by Smithfield and Spanish suppliers was also cited for disease. Testosterone rejections jumped from about 455 metric tons in 2024 (the first time it had been cited by Chinese customs) to 5,448 metric tons in 2025. The testosterone rejections were cited mainly for pork supplied by a number of Spanish companies, but shipments from several other European and UK companies were also cited.

China's surge in rejections of imported poultry during 2025 consisted mainly of U.S. products--mostly chicken paws. Monthly rejections of poultry had never exceeded 270 metric tons until February 2025 when they jumped to 672 metric tons. Rejections grew exponentially to a peak of 2,000 metric tons in June. Rejections fell to 1,415 metric tons in July--still the second-largest amount ever rejected. Rejections during January-February 2025 came mainly from Brazil and Belarus. Growth in rejections of U.S. poultry appears to coincide with rising trade tensions and imposition of tariffs that began in March-April. Rejections of U.S. poultry grew from 400 metric tons in March to 1,766 metric tons in June as the U.S. and China traded tariffs, gave reprieves and failed to progress in negotiations. Another 1,185 metric tons of U.S. poultry was rejected in July. 

Compiled from China Customs Administration web site. January-July 2025.

All the major U.S. poultry companies--plus a number of less prominent ones--had poultry rejected by China in 2025. Detection of furacilin, an antibacterial agent, was the reason most often cited by Chinese inspectors for rejecting U.S. poultry. Other reasons cited included failure of sensory inspection, lack of documentation, and labeling.

There are no clues to indicate why Chinese inspectors have been suddenly detecting so many problems with U.S. poultry and Spanish/Danish pork. The timing of the rejections is suggestive of China's use of stringent inspections as another tool of retaliation. Oddly, there no rejections of either type of meat during January-April 2024.

The United States has also had the most beef rejected during 2025, but the volume is much smaller compared with pork and poultry. The U.S. has had 730 metric tons of beef rejected over the first 7 months of 2025, ahead of Brazil's 203 metric tons, Denmark's 54 metric tons, and Argentina's 37 metric tons (includes inedible cattle products).

There is little doubt that China uses selective inspections of imports as a nontariff barrier and retaliatory tool, but its use is selective and impossible to prove.

During the 2018 trade war there were several instances of U.S. and Canadian pork rejections/bans reported in news media, but no surge in rejections was evident in the reports posted on the customs web site. (Reported rejections were at their lowest level ever during 2018 following a spike in rejections during a 2017 campaign to address safety of imported food and a reorganization of import regulation in 2018).