The top trade official for the National Pork Producers Council was in China last week.
Nick Giordano met with U.S. and Chinese government and private sector representatives on a host of trade-related issues. Topics included China’s continued reluctance to import U.S. pork because of H1N1 flu concerns and its refusal to take pork from pigs given ractopamine (rack-top-ah-mean). That’s a feed additive widely used in U.S. pork production to promote leaner meat.
In December, China announced it would lift its H1N1-related ban on U.S. pork, but it has not yet begun accepting imports. Phil Seng, president and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, says China is simply using H1N1 as an excuse to halt imports while it increases its own pork production.
“Their production in China this year is up about 5 ½ percent,” Seng says, “and so what the Chinese are doing is, they’re trying to slow down imports. They have a high inventory level in China right now.”
Seng says it could be a while before China resumes imports of U.S. pork. “So for the next six months we don’t see China moving aggressively in any one area, because they seem to have enough pork,” he says. “So a lot of this has to do with their ability to turn on imports and exports, and they’re using the H1N1 thing in this regard. So the more we can protest this, the more we can address this, the better it’s going to be.”
On the ractopamine issue, the U.N. food-safety body this summer is expected to set a maximum residue level for the product. That level has been approved in the U.S. by the FDA and is accepted by 25 other countries.
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