A woman cleans a smart layer chicken farm in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu Province on Sunday. Local poultry farms have over recent years introduced automatic and intelligent chicken farming equipment and egg processing machines. These moves will transform traditional farms into an entire poultry supply chain powered by technological innovation. Photo: VCG

Photo: VCG

China on Thursday lifted its ban on US poultry imports that has been in place since 2015, amid the continuation of trade talks, paving the way for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of potential US meat exports to China. 

Lifting the poultry ban sends a signal that the China-US prolonged trade negotiations are moving in the positive direction, one expert said, but he added that the ban's lifting wouldn't greatly affect the country's poultry industry, which only relies to a very limited extent on imports. 

According to a joint statement released by the Chinese customs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on Thursday, China will lift the ban that restricted imports of US poultry, effective immediately. 

China has restricted US poultry imports mainly out of concern about bird flu, said Jiao Shanwei, editor-in-chief of grain news website cngrain.com. 

The lifting opens China's poultry market for US companies to tap. On October 28, shares of American chicken processors surged after the Chinese government disclosed plans to lift the ban on US poultry.

But Jiao said that actual impact of lifting the ban would be limited on domestic consumption, as only a tiny portion of the country's poultry supply is imported from overseas markets, and the US has no special advantage like costs or quality in their poultry products. 

"Even US fast food brands like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken that used to import large amounts of chicken meat have chosen to turn to domestic supplies, for reasons such as lower transportation costs and rapidly maturing poultry breeding techniques in China," Jiao told the Global Times. 

The US exported $390 million worth of poultry to China in 2014 before the ban, according to media reports.