“There’s not a set timeline … but when you look at how quickly China has worked with countries like Canada and Brazil to restore that access once they lifted their ban, I think this could be a matter of months,” said Kent Baucus, NCBA director of international trade.
The U.S. Meat Export Federation wants beef to move as quickly as possible but just doesn’t have a timeline, said Joe Schuele, USMEF vice president of communications.
“While this is an important first step in the process of resuming beef exports to China, USMEF understands that China must still negotiate with USDA the conditions that will apply to U.S. exports entering this market,” USMEF President and CEO Philip Seng said in a press statement.
The next step is for China’s food safety inspection agency to set the terms of trade, which means what the U.S. beef can and can’t contain and which methods of production are allowed, Baucus said.
“We’re going to have to negotiate all that. So it’s really uncertain yet as to what the final product will look like going into the Chinese market,” he said.
The ban started with “the cow that stole Christmas” in 2003, he said. That discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — mad cow disease — in a Washington state dairy cow closed many U.S. beef export markets overnight.
Since then, restoring access has been a priority, and China is the latest market to reopen to U.S. beef, he said.
Lifting the ban is a big development considering it’s taken 13 years and a lot of education to address all of China’s concerns, he said.
The resumption of beef trade is great news for U.S. producers. China represents one-fifth of the world’s population with a middle class that’s larger than the entire U.S. population, he said.
“This is not only a population that wants protein, they want beef, and beef demand in China has continued to grow,” he said.
China’s imports of beef from other countries reached 495,000 metric tons in 2015, a 56 percent increase over 2014, according to USMEF.
The country’s beef imports were a record $2.3 billion in 2015. In 2016, its imports are expected to increase to 825,000 tons, making it the second-largest beef importer in the world, according to USDA.
Source: CapitalPress
Link: http://www.capitalpress.com/Livestock/20161003/us-beef-access-to-china-could-come-quickly
