China’s ban on Canadian beef still in place 17 months later
CALGARY – A Chinese ban on Canadian beef that industry officials expected would be short-lived remains in place 17 months later, and industry representatives say they remain in the dark about the reasons.
China has been blocking beef shipments from Canadian processing plants ever since an atypical case of BSE, or mad cow disease, was found on an Alberta farm in December of 2021.
At the time, Canadian officials expressed little concern that the case would have lasting market impacts. Atypical BSE develops spontaneously in about one in every one million cattle and unlike the classic BSE strain — which has been linked to the fatal neurological disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease — it poses no health risk to humans and is not transmissible.
While most of Canada’s trading partners did not respond with any form of trade restrictions after the discovery of the case, South Korea and the Philippines joined China in suspending beef imports from this country.
However, both South Korea and the Philippines lifted the restrictions less than two months later, while China — which in 2021 was Canada’s third-largest beef export market, importing $193 million worth of product — has still not resumed trade.
“Most countries do not close when you find an atypical case,” said Dennis Laycraft, executive vice-president for the Canadian Cattle Association.
“It’s just a few that did and you know, all those other countries opened up fairly quickly. So yeah, really the outlier here is China.”
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