The Canadian Meat Council is applauding news that Canada and China have agreed to a deal that will allow Canadian meat producers to export bone-in beef and fresh chilled beef and pork products to China.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday from China an agreement that will facilitate the expansion of trade with China for the Canadian beef and pork sectors.
Under the agreement China will allow the import of bone in beef products and start jointly with Canada a pilot project for chilled beef and chilled pork products.
Marcus Mattinson, the Communications Manager with the Canadian Meat Council, says the expansion of trade with China for the beef and pork sectors is significant to Canada’s economy, significant to our industry and has the potential to create more jobs for Canadians.
During the past five years China has consistently been Canada’s third largest export destination for pork products, so we’re talking about an average of 300 million dollars annually. For beef products, China has been a top six destination for beef products so that was approximately 77 million dollars annually.
Meat products to China have been restricted to frozen items only so this is obviously huge potential to expand into that market. China has been an expanding market for Canadian meat products in general. It’s a high quality product, they want our product, it’s a growing market.
The key is in the potential fro growth and we see this as a significant opportunity to grow. As a result of this agreement what we could see is an increased export of 100 million dollars for pork and up to 125 million dollars for beef respectively and that’s in the next five years. We could potentially see numbers as high as that and I’m sure, with this expansion, it’s definitely achievable.
~ Marcus Mattinson, Canadian Meat Council
Mattinson says Canadian beef and pork industry stakeholders are looking forward to new developments with the trade relationship with China as well.
