Australia has officially opened its market for fresh and frozen beef from Canada for the first time since BSE in 2003.
The Canadian Cattle Association is pleased noting its one of the last remaining countries to have maintained bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) restrictions, complete their risk assessment and open their market for Canadian beef.
CCA President Tyler Fulton says Canadian beef farmers and ranchers are proud to produce the highest quality and safest beef in the world.
"As the demand for Canadian beef around the world continues to grow, we look forward to every new market opportunity."
Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald says Canada is known around the world for producing top-quality beef and that’s a testament to the hard work of our producers.
"Strengthening our trade ties with Australia—one of our key partners in the Indo-Pacific—means more opportunities for Canadian farmers and processors to grow their businesses, create good jobs, and build up our economy. The Government of Canada is absolutely committed to supporting the industry as we open new doors, drive growth, and showcase the best of Canada to the world."
The CCA's General Manager Ryder Lee says it's about more than just moving Canadian beef into Australia. The move can play an important role in dealing with other countries.
"With our high-quality grain-finished beef. I imagine there's some customers there (Australia) that might work out, but it's a precedent thing. It's a leading trading nation, and having them following the World Organization for Animal Health suggestions on how a negligible risk country is treated is important, and that's the big piece there."
He points out that while most of the markets that once shut their borders to Canada when we were dealing with BSE have now reopened their markets, there are still some countries like South Korea where there's still work to be done.
"There's some rules around what Canadian cattle that spent time in the US and and how long they have to be in the US before they can be part of an export to South Korea. So that's probably our biggest one right now."
He points out that eclipsing all of that is our own rules internally, about what our processing plants have to do with specified risk materials, which is a bigger list than what U.S. plants have to do.
"We need to get that on the same level cause without getting that done, our cost of processing is higher. We're not gonna expand processing capacity in Canada, and the cost to process over 30 months in Canada has some of those small plants just saying, no we're not going to do that. The waste disposal burden is too high."
Lee notes that it's not just a big plant effect; it's across the country, adding that they've been working with the CFIA to make those policy and regulatory changes.