China, U.S. are meeting on trade
Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2007
U. S. farm officials continue to pressure China to reduce its restrictions on beef, pork and chicken imports, even as product safety officials in Washington vow to increase inspections of Chinese products coming here.
Wei Chuanzhong, vice minister from the General Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, visited Washington on Tuesday to talk about product safety with the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and meet with some U. S. farm officials.
This is the second meeting in as many weeks between Wei and his counterparts in Washington. On Tuesday, China said it would eliminate the use of lead paint in toys shipped to the United States, and officials in Washington said they would inspect more toys, fireworks, cigarette lighters and other products coming into the United States. While some progress is being made in these trade discussions, both sides are still clinging to a laundry list of disputed items, from plastic toys to beef ribs. With a population of more than 1. 3 billion and a burgeoning middle class, China is fertile ground for food makers like Tyson Foods Inc. seeking to grow international sales.
A week ago, Tyson Chief Executive Officer Richard Bond said the Springdale, Ark., meat processor is looking for ways to further penetrate the market in its drive to reach $ 5 billion in international sales by fiscal 2010.
“We have a substantial valueadded chicken presence in China, as well as some pork operations,” Bond told analysts Sept. 5 at the Lehman Brothers Back-To-School Consumer Conference in Boston. “There is certainly room for growth, and we are looking at a couple of acquisitions there as well.”
Tyson currently produces about a quarter of all the meat consumed in the United States, but worldwide its market share is just 1 percent, Bond said. Growth in many international markets will be made possible through targeted acquisitions and increasing exports as markets reopen.
Two weeks ago, Mark Keenum, the U. S. Agriculture Department’s undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services, met Wei in China.
What he brought away from that meeting was a renewed sense of frustration, he said in an interview Monday.
“They wanted to spend a lot of time talking about problems they have with U. S. products. They wanted [to be ] very critical of the quality and safety of U. S. products, and they have a long list of things they had to talk about,” Keenum said in a telephone interview from Washington.
Like many nations, China cut off U. S. beef after the discovery of a case of mad-cow disease in late 2003. China’s inspection service continues to only accept beef from cattle younger than 30 months, a standard that doesn’t comply with the scientific, international standard of no age restrictions, U. S. farm officials said.
Keenum said Chinese officials continue to block U. S. meat imports through unfair trade practices. An example is China’s zero-tolerance policy on salmonella in chicken products.
“We look at this zero tolerance as tantamount to a ban,” Keenum said, because salmonella in chicken is common and can be destroyed through cooking.
Pork shipments to China have also been hampered by a zero tolerance for ractopamine, a feed additive allowed in U. S. hog diets, but prohibited by China.
Even as U. S. officials look for ways to open the Chinese market to beef, China is looking to expand its beef exports to America, said Eric Nelson, chairman of trade at the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund / United Stock Growers of America.
Nelson testified in front of the International Trade Commission last week that China is putting policies in place to begin massive beef shipments here. “One reason that China has been able to increase its cattle and beef production so dramatically is because of active government programs that encourage and support domestic production while shielding it from international competition,” the legal fund wrote in a letter to the secretary of the International Trade Commission in August. However, Steve Kay, the editor of Cattle Buyers Weekly and a longtime analyst of the beef industry, said Monday he doubts whether China will become a major exporter of beef to the United States. Keenum agreed about beef, but said the USDA is working on a rule to allow cooked poultry imports from China.
To contact this reporter: dirvin@arkansasonline. com
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