Agricultural News
USMEF Working to Expand Export Markets for Beef Variety Meats
Sun, 15 May 2016 17:17:27 CDT
The beef export business is an important aspect of the U.S. cattle industry, and the sale of beef variety meats - liver, tripe, oxtails and more - continues to play a vital role in that export trade.
Beef variety meat exports make an important contribution to the profitability of U.S. cattle producers by enhancing the "drop credit" - the price received for items other than muscle cuts.
Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation senior vice president for global marketing, says the drop credit has been under pressure in recent years, due in part to Russia closing to U.S. beef in 2013.
He says the USMEF is "focused on trying to impact that demand curve for the beef variety meats" and points to Japan and South Korea as good examples of this process.
"We've had a lot of success this year in Japan, especially with beef tongue. The volume on exports is up about 20 percent compared to last year," Halstrom says. "Beef feet and oxtails have a very big market in Korea, and we've seen more volume in the first three months this year than we did in the first half of last year.
"If you add a few of these together, it impacts the drop credit dramatically."
Halstrom says beef liver exports to Egypt have increased by 14 percent in volume in 2016, but says the U.S. is becoming overexposed with so much of this variety meat going into that market. To help reverse this trend, Halstrom says it is important to find a wider range of destinations for beef livers.
"Markets like Peru, markets like Angola and South Africa - we just regained access there from the 2003 BSE incident," he says. "So South Africa would be a brand new market that hasn't had the opportunity to send any variety meats there, and it's definitely a destination for beef liver.
"Trying to build up that demand in some of these smaller emerging markets is a key strategy of ours."
Hear more about how variety meats are impacting the U.S. beef export business during the latest Beef Buzz.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is 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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