Washington, D.C. - Maybe the Chinese should eat rice instead of corn-fed beef and pork, Sen. Charles Grassley said.
The Iowa Republican said Tuesday that if it's right to blame rising food prices on the use of corn for ethanol, then it's OK to also question the growth of meat consumption in China, which increases the use of grain for livestock feed.
"If part of our problem is that the Chinese are going to eat meat and you've got to have corn and soybeans to feed the Chinese their meat, then why isn't it just as legitimate for the Chinese to go back and eat rice as it is for us to change our policy on corn to ethanol?" Grassley asked in a conference call with reporters.
The United States is facing an international backlash over its policy of converting corn and soybeans to biofuels.
Critics, including the World Bank, say that the rise of biofuel production is contributing to the soaring price of food around the world.
Almost all of the increase in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 went to ethanol production in the United States, depleting supplies for other uses, the World Bank said in a recent report. Rising food prices may in turn undermine recent income gains in poor countries, the report said.
Higher energy prices, poor weather in Australia and other countries, and increased meat consumption in developing countries also have been blamed for price increases.
Meat consumption in China has more than doubled since 1990, according to the World Resources Institute.
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute said U.S. biofuel policy has "become one of the worst foreign policy issues in our history."
Foreigners view Americans as determined to keep driving gas-guzzlers "and using ethanol to fuel them, regardless of how it affects people in the rest of the world," he said.
He said that for some time, the U.S. government and agribusiness interests have encouraged foreign countries to buy American grain for animal feed.
"Now suddenly we're pulling the rug out from under them. I think we have to look at the ethics there," Brown said.
Grassley said he wasn't recommending that China and other countries reduce their meat consumption. "I'm saying it's legitimate for me to raise that as a question, just as it's legitimate for them to raise the question of us of corn to ethanol," he said.
Officials with Chinese Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.
Reporter Philip Brasher can be reached at (202) 906-8138 or [email protected]Des Moines Register
