Monday, July 16, 2012

BSE landscape has shifted


The global landscape has undergone a radical change since Canada’s beef industry was devastated by the discovery of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow’s disease) in one Alberta cow in May of 2003.

Exports stopped cold, backing up cattle and beef in Canada where prices plunged.

Hardest hit were cull cows for which there was virtually no market for weeks.

By comparison, the United States Meat Export Federation says there has been hardly any change in its exports following the discovery in April that a dairy cow in California had BSE.

“All things considered, we are pleased with the manner in which beef exports have weathered the most recent BSE case,” a federation official said.

Times have certainly changed. And just maybe the U.S. has sharper civil servants than the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to ensure that trade doors remain open.

“With the exception of Saudi Arabia, we have not suffered any significant setbacks in terms of market access. And though we expected consumer interest to slow temporarily in markets such as Korea, the May export results were actually quite strong.”

May was the strongest month so far this year for U.S. beef exports, but volume (95,221 metric tons) was down 13 percent compared to May 2011 and 10 percent lower (456,343 metric tons) through the first five months of the year.