The Canadian Meat Council is applauding the resumption of the sale of Canadian pork and beef to China. Just over four months after suspending imports of Canadian beef and pork, due to the discovery of fraudulent export certificates, China is allowing a resumption of those imports.
Canadian Meat Council President and CEO Chris White says the matter was resolved in part as the result of changes made by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to address gaps identified by China and work done by individual exporters to tighten up their own internal processes.
Clip-Chris White-Canadian Meat Council:
From a perspective of pork it's a very significant market. The industry sells a lot of specific pork product to China and it's allowed them in a very competitive industry to carve out a niche for themselves so the loss of that market this year was very very difficult. Canada was tacking toward about a billion dollars worth of exports so to have lost that was really discouraging.
On the beef side, less so because most of the beef still goes to the U.S. and there's not the same consumption rate of beef in China as there is with pork. That being said the consumption of beef and the export of beef was also trending up this year. It's such a large market, that Canada will move quickly and industry will move quickly to recapture any of the market share that it lost this year while the suspension was in place. With African Swine Fever being an issue, we know that China will be struggling to replace pork products that they've lost because of domestic challenges.
Going forward Canada will do what it needs to do to ensure that any product that we're exporting to China, be it pork or beef, can get in as easily as possible. That again speaks to the tighter measures that CFIA will have in place internally and some tighter controls that industry will have in place internally as well.
Source : Farmscape