Good news, bad news for U.S. meat exports

Exports of U.S. meat products in September were encouraging for pork, but not so much for beef.

First the bad news—September beef exports were down 25 percent in volume and 34 percent in value from September of 2008.  And for the year, beef exports are off 12 percent in volume, hampered by market access restrictions and difficult global economic conditions.

Now the good news—Erin Daley of the U.S. Meat Export Federation says that, while pork exports still trail last year’s record large levels, the September results were very encouraging.

“We saw the largest pork export volumes since April of this year,” says Daley, “and exports just barely trailed the volumes seen in 2008, by about six percent.”

Daley says the U.S. has exported over 20 percent of its pork production during every month this year.  “Even though that’s slightly lower than the records we set last year when we were exporting about a quarter of U.S. pork production, this is still well above historical levels,” she says.

The leading importers of U.S. pork—Mexico and Japan—continued their strong performance in September.  Mexico’s September volume surpassed last year’s by nearly 37 percent.