Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 4/18/16


Ireland has shipped only 2,000 metric tons of beef to the United States since Washington lifted its ban related to concerns of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in February 2015 — way off the pace for the 20,000 metric tons per year that Minister of Agriculture Simon Coveney originally predicted.

Through the first quarter of 2016, Ireland has shipped to the U.S. a little less than 700 metric tons of beef, signaling a long road ahead to the type of volume Irish officials had envisioned and perhaps oversold.

William James, the former chief veterinarian for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and now a consultant who was hired by the Irish government to help train processors there on U.S. beef requirements, told Meatingplace that volumes have been limited in part because Irish processors still lack the interventions needed to be able to ship beef intended for grinding.

The current agreement only allows for intact product from Ireland because the U.S. protocol doesn’t require pathogen interventions. Irish processors, as is customary in all of Europe, do not use lactic acid or virtually any chemicals to kill pathogens on beef carcasses because it is not acceptable to consumers there.

“The first thing we talked about with the Irish inspection officials was that intact beef was going to be easier (to export to the U.S.) than ground beef because there were new requirements for ground beef including testing for STECS, and the interventions available in the EU were lacking,” said James, who also writes a blog about federal food safety regulations for Meatingplace.

FSIS has further stipulated that it conduct a baseline survey for E. coli O157:H7 and the other STECS in Ireland, which has yet to begin. It will be some time for it to be done, and then more time to establish interventions and a testing protocol.

In other words, it’s going to be a long while before Ireland is shipping ground beef, and hitting the types of volumes it expected.
“The industry wasn’t prepared for this dichotomy,” James said. “And the Irish government thought it was doing well to open the market to intact beef, but for processors their principal market was product intended for grinding.”

For more stories, go to www.meatingplace.com.