Taiwan’s government announced Friday it’s lowering trade barriers on U.S. beef and pork. The National Pork Producers Council released a statement saying they’ve been working for 15 years to get Taiwan to eliminate its non-tariff barriers to U.S. pork exports and they’re pleased they’ve chosen to move forward soon on lifting those. Nebraska Pork Producers Association Executive Director Al Juhnke says it’s good news Taiwan is moving ahead with that.
Taiwan has agreed to allow American pork imports that contain trace amounts of the feed additive (rack-toe-puh-mean) ractopamine which they had previously banned. Juhnke says a lot of pork can have trace amounts of that that can be detected and in the past that has shut all U.S. pork out of the market.
He says several Southeast Asian countries are important markets for U.S pork so having Taiwan loosen up trade will be helpful going forward.
Ractopamine is widely used as a feed ingredient in global beef and pork production and is approved for use in nearly 30 countries The International regulatory agency, CODEX Alimentarius says ractopamine is safe and acceptable.
