China’s Ministry of Agriculture has announced the country’s 13-year-old ban on imports of U.S. beef has been lifted. Joe Scheule with the U.S. Meat Export Federation says this is an important first step in the process of resuming beef exports to China, which they believe may include specifications similar to other trading partners in the Pacific Rim established after the BSE case in 2003.
He says they understand that China must still negotiate with USDA the conditions that will apply to U.S. beef exports entering this market. Only then will they be able to predict a timeline for U.S. suppliers to begin shipping beef product and the market impact.
Scheule says China was not a big importer of beef until about three years ago, but now it’s the fastest growing beef market in the world as evidenced by their purchases from other markets.
He says China’s beef imports would be comparable to Japan, which bought a total of $3.4 billion of beef last year, of which $1.6 billion was from the U.S.
