The US revives focus on Australia as beef export target

THE American Meat Institute has revived interest in gaining market access to Australia as a US beef export destination, in a move it described in correspondence to US trade administrators as being of ‘critical’ importance. In a letter to the US Trade Representative in Washington dated last Thursday, the American Meat Institute points to the vigorous growth in US pork trade into Australia over the past 20 years as a portent to future beef opportunities. The US has sought beef export access to Australia off-and-on over the past 15 years, after Australia imposed a suspension in 2003 after BSE was discovered in the US herd. Beef Central first wrote about the prospects in 2011. Some have interpreted the request to restore trade as ‘symbolic’ rather than commercially significant, signalling to other, larger customer countries that US beef has access to a nation with the some of the tightest biosecurity regulations and lowest disease presence in the world. Even prior to the 2003 ban, ...