China Has No Basis to Ban Australian Beef, PM Albanese Says

China has no basis for using foot-and-mouth disease as a reason to suspend beef imports from Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday in response to reports that Beijing has restricted trade.

Australia remains free of the disease and biosecurity officials were acting “very strongly” to handle heightened risks that an outbreak might occur, Albanese said in an interview with national broadcaster ABC. Any confirmed infections would risk locking Australia’s multibillion-dollar meat industry out of more than 150 overseas markets.

A Chinese beef industry publication reported late Sunday that customs clearance for agricultural products from Australia and New Zealand had been suspended and that relevant businesses had been notified, without saying where it got the information. The publication, World Meat Imports Report, on Monday said that customs clearance for Australian farm goods including meat and dairy was back to normal.

Albanese has repeatedly said that resetting frosty relations between the two trading partners would depend on China ending punitive measures on exports — a request that has remained largely unanswered. About a fifth of Australian beef by volume go to China, which relied on Australia for about 7% of its imports in 2021.