China lifts ban on six Australian meatworks

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo has welcomed China’s move to lift the ban on six Australian meat facilities.

Australia’s beef exports to China were worth $670 million last year.

China has lifted the ban it imposed in July on the products of six meat facilities that supply about 30 per cent of all Australian beef exports to the country.

Trade, Tourism and Investment Minister Steven Ciobo has welcomed this restoration of trade, which follows intensive lobbying — he has made four visits to China this year. The ban was imposed because of Chinese concerns about labelling, not quality.

Mr Ciobo told The Australian: “This is a terrific outcome for the affected facilities, for their workers and suppliers.”

He said he was “very appreciative of the great work the Chinese and Australian authorities have done together to resolve this so quickly, to get it back on track”.

The Australian industry was well-versed on the need to comply with China’s high standard, he said. “It’s important to get it right,” he said.

The abattoirs affected by the ban, which is lifted from this morning, are in Queensland and NSW. Three of the six are Australian-owned: Australian Country Choice, Northern Rivers Co-operative, and Thomas Food.

The other three are foreign-owned — two by Brazilian meat giant JBS, which has become the largest meat processor in Australia, and one, Kilcoy, by China’s own biggest agribusiness, New Hope.

Top beef export destinations 2016

Senior veterinarians of Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Water Resources visited each producer to ensure they had acted to address the compliance issues, and sent a report to China’s quarantine authority outlining the companies’ responses.

Australia’s beef exports to China were worth $670 million last year. But the market is becoming increasingly competitive, with US beef back on tables there after being banned by Chinese regulators for 14 years.

A similar issue with a pork supplier from Germany earlier this year took five months to resolve, and a Canadian problem, also over pork, took 18 months.

Australia has become the world’s leading supplier of red meat. Last year it was the largest exporter of beef and second largest of sheep meat, as well as the third-largest exporter of live stock.

The Chinese beef import market is growing faster than any other in the world, with legal imports up 22.4 per cent last year, when they were worth a total of $3.4 billion.

Large amounts of meat are also being imported illegally, with India understood to be the biggest source.

The domestic industry is also rising steadily.

The country has become the third-biggest beef producer globally, after the US and Brazil, reflecting the growth in demand, with beef’s share in national meat production increasing from 5 per cent to 8.4 per cent over the past 25 years.