The European Parliament is proposing measures to put an end to the wave of cheap Ukrainian chicken meat flooding the European market through a loophole. The country avoided tariffs by exporting a special bone-in cut of poultry meat.

As a tradeoff, Ukraine is permitted to export 50,000 tons more chicken fillet exempt of import levies to the EU. The chicken fillets with a piece of bone and skin that were used in the loophole will now fall under the quota. This means that this chicken fillet can no longer be imported at unlimited quantities and tax-free.

The Loophole:

By cutting chicken fillet in a special way, with wing and skin attached, the Ukrainians used a loophole to get kilos more chicken fillets into the EU than the 20,000 tonnes agreed in the association agreement in 2014. Chicken fillet with a piece of wing could be imported into the EU without restrictions. After Dutch MEPs sounded the alarm, the European Commission entered into negotiations with the government in Kiev about adjusting the treaty.

Fabian Brockotter

 

The four UK farming union presidents have said that last night’s BBC documentary, Meat: a threat to our planet?, shows why food standards must be upheld in future trade deals.

They said: “At no point did the documentary explain the vast differences between American meat production and UK production. This was a massive oversight considering the BBC’s audience and would have left people with the impression that all meat is produced in the same way.

“We know the public want to eat sustainably and they can do this by investing in the UK livestock sector, which is already producing some of the most climate-friendly beef and lamb in the world and has an ambition to do even more. Beef production in the UK is already 2.5 times more efficient than the global average and 4 times more efficient than places which are deforesting land.”

Simon King

It was meant to be a documentary exploring the impact our carnivorous ways was having on the planet.

But the BBC’s ‘Meat: A Threat To Our Planet’ has become embroiled in a row with British farmers, who fear the show could damage their reputation.

The show, headed up by Liz Bonnin who has presented on Springwatch and Blue Planet Live, took viewers to the Amazon rainforest to see the destruction to the rainforest to make room for meat production.

 

Helena Horton

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday that commodity exporters must disclose sales of hog carcasses, giving officials and traders more insight into a surge of Chinese pork buying that has roiled global meat markets.

China’s pork imports have nearly doubled this year as a fatal pig disease has decimated its herd and pushed prices of the country’s favorite meat to record highs. Its beef and chicken imports have also climbed as China is seeking to replace millions of pigs killed by African swine fever.

The USDA published a rule to specify that exporters must report sales of pork and beef carcasses effective immediately because pork sales to China were rising and there was “an apparent lack of commensurate reporting,” according to an emailed statement.

Tom Polansek

China’s effort to fill a protein gap created by the spread of African swine fever is rippling through Brazil’s massive beef industry, pushing up prices and profits for both cattle ranchers and meatpackers.

China’s effort to fill a protein gap created by the spread of African swine fever is rippling through Brazil’s massive beef industry, pushing up prices and profits for both cattle ranchers and meatpackers.

While China has been increasing local poultry production and raising pork imports from several suppliers, Brazil is the only big beef exporter able to meet China’s demand. That’s leading Chinese importers to buy all types of cuts, raising prices along the Brazilian chain, from calves to animals ready for slaughter.

Brazilian beef shipments to China jumped 62% last month from a year ago as China approves more plants to export. Both wholesale beef and cattle prices jumped about 30% this month, according to figures from Cepea, the University of Sao Paulo research arm.

Tatiana Freitas

The cost of living in China has outstripped the 3% government target for the first time in a decade, and a big part of the problem is the soaring price of pork, which is being driven up by a widespread outbreak of African swine fever (ASF).

Pork is a big deal in China. The average Chinese person gets through about 30kg of pork a year (by comparison, people in US eat about 26kg of beef a year and UK consumers about 18kg). Since August 2018, when China notified the World Organisation for Animal Health that ASF was in the country, the disease has spread with extraordinary speed.

Some 40% of Chinese pigs – hundreds of millions of animals – have now been lost, and the result has been a chronic shortage of pork and rocketing prices. The Chinese government has been forced to dig into its gigantic emergency reserves of frozen meat.

 

Bibi van der Zee, Michael Standaert

Waitrose is set to only sell British lamb as it phases out meat from New Zealand in order to “support UK agriculture.”

The retailer used to supplement its lamb range with New Zealand products in the winter months, but is to stop doing so by 2021.

Most of the supermarket’s meat and dairy offering is already home-grown; all of the own-brand fresh chicken, pork, beef, eggs and liquid milk is already sourced exclusively from the UK.

 

Helena Horton

Lamb prices have been boosted by solid UK and international demand, while beef prices are still significantly down on recent years, new figures show

The average deadweight steer price in England and Wales now stands at 319.5p per kg, according to Hybu Cig Cymru – Meat Promotion Wales (HCC).

It says this year’s low beef prices are an ‘international phenomenon’, caused by a range of supply and demand factors including low consumer confidence in the UK.

 

 

 

Chinese demand is increasingly swallowing up Brazil’s beef supply, pushing the country’s cattle prices to a record high. China’s hunger for foreign meat has shot up as an outbreak of African swine fever has reduced its domestic pig population and has sent it looking for substitutes.

Chinese imports of Brazilian meat are up 23.6% for January to October against the same period in 2018, meatpackers association Abrafrigo says.

Wholesale beef prices in the greater Sao Paulo area have consequently hit an all-time high this week, according to University of Sao Paulo’s Cepea research centre, a benchmark think-tank.

 

China’s effort to fill a protein gap created by the spread of African swine fever is rippling through Brazil’s massive beef industry, pushing up prices and profits for both cattle ranchers and meatpackers.

While China has been increasing local poultry production and raising pork imports from several suppliers, Brazil is the only big beef exporter able to meet China’s demand. That’s leading Chinese importers to buy all types of cuts, raising prices along the Brazilian chain, from calves to animals ready for slaughter.

Brazilian beef shipments to China jumped 62% last month from a year ago as China approves more plants to export. Both wholesale beef and cattle prices jumped about 30% this month, according to figures from Cepea, the University of Sao Paulo research arm.

 

Tatiana Freitas