Ten cooked poultry processors in China have been named as the first group of inspection-free exporters. Ten cooked poultry processors in China, including Beijing Huadu and Jilin Deda, were recently named the first group of inspection-free exporters by the country's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).

The move is to stimulate produce exporters to persist in quality first, thus to be more competitive in the international market, announced AQSIQ.

Jilin Deda, a joint venture between Charoen Pokphand of Thailand and a local company in northeast China, hopes to export cooked poultry to the EU with the new policy. The company has shipped products to more than 20 countries including Japan, Russia and South Africa.

Data released last week from China's Ministry of Agriculture show that China exported 173,700 metric tons of processed poultry valued at US$543 million. That's up 13.78 percent and up 12.34 percent year-on-year respectively, in the first nine months of 2006. About 96 percent of the processed poultry were shipped to Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.