Agricultural News
US Beef Industry Officials Hoping Obama Team will Finish Beef Export Deal with China
Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:18:49 CST
The US Beef industry continues to wait on the US and Chinese governments to conclude an arrangement that will result in US beef being allowed back into Mainland China through the front door for the first time since the discovery of the Canadian dairy cow with BSE in the United States.
Some experts in US Beef Trade overseas believe that once we get the Chinese market open, they could quickly become one of our largest, if not the largest outlet for US beef. Class 13 of the Oklahoma Ag Leadership Program spent time in China- and the picture here shows a wholesale meat market in Beijing where thousands of small merchants shop several days a week buying beef, pork, poultry and seafood for their shoops and restaurants.
The now former USDA Undersecretary Jim Miller spent eleven days early in 2011 negotiating a deal- and he and his team fell short. Not, by much, but short of a successful deal. Now, the US Beef Industry is concerned that with the departure of Miller as well as some of the most knowledgeable negotiators in the USTR's office, the Obama Administration will have a difficult job of picking up where the negotiations were left.
Phil Seng, the President and CEO of the US Meat Export Federation, says that 2011 is the year that we simply must break through the gridlock and find a way to get beef flowing to China.
A look at where the negotiations currently stand and where we go from here is our focus on today's Beef Buzz.
We used the term earlier the "front door" for trade- currently at least some US beef enters through the back door into China- the back door being Hong Kong.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the state on the Radio Oklahoma Network- but is also a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the listen bar below for today's show- and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
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