Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 4/30/15


U.S. beef and pork production practices could be “out of sync” with the demands of the international market, according to Phil Seng, president and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Lack of a comprehensive traceability system in the U.S. has stymied efforts to gain access, for example, to the potentially lucrative Chinese beef market, to which 71 other countries are exporting beef and meeting that requirement, he said recently at the North American Meat Institute’s Meat Industry Management Conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

Seng also noted that 26 countries are trying to ship pork to Japan, and almost as many to Korea.

“It’s not a supply and demand problem,” said Seng, who noted that U.S. red meat exports raised a record $13 billion in sales last year. “Competition in the international market is fierce. Are our production practices out of sync with the international market (in terms of traceability, antibiotics, etc.)? As more countries are meeting the costs of admission into these markets, it makes it even more difficult on us.”

“We can’t afford to not cooperate, and I think in the future how well we cooperate is our ability to compete,” he added.

U.S. beef has been shut out of China’s market since 2003 following the discovery of the first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). China was just one of many markets to ban U.S. beef for the same reason, and the U.S. industry lost billions over the ensuing years as a consequence.

Seng said the U.S. needs a traceability system to ensure “that if we have a foreign animal disease that this whole country is not shut down like it was in 2003.”

Resistance to traceability from independent cattle ranchers, wary of the costs and of the federal government’s oversight of such a system, has helped block past efforts. Short of that, one idea has been to create a beef export verification system specifically for China.

But Al Amanza, administrator of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), also speaking at the NAMI conference, said China wants 100 percent traceability assurance.

“What they’re asking for is a little more complex,” he said, later adding that FSIS is helping to develop a new system.
Almanza said he will be visiting China in late May or early June, primarily to audit poultry plants there but also to raise the beef issue again.

“They’re very engaged in understanding that they can’t feed all of the people in their country,” he said.

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