Imported Beef Likely to Capture Record Share

[Tommy]

The gap between domestic beef production and consumption is greater than ever, yet prices to cattle producers fail to reflect this fact. While some industry analysts may point to the loss of U.S. export markets to explain reduced production and falling prices, worth examining is another trend affecting cattle producers: rising imports of cattle and beef.



An industry review suggests we could soon suffer a repeat of 2002. Remember 2002? The U.S. cattle industry reeled from depressed prices, with Choice fed steers averaging only $67.30 per cwt – well below production costs.



Consider the following facts from Kansas State University (KSU) and various USDA agencies – including the National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS), the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) – facts that ought to give cattle producers serious pause.



In 2005, after eight years of herd liquidation, the U.S. slaughtered 3.3 million fewer cattle and produced 2.4 billion pounds less beef than in 2002. Remarkable, given that 2005 total domestic beef consumption remained near 2002 levels, and that the KSU Beef Demand Index was six points higher in 2005 than in 2002. The U.S. cattle industry is now under-producing for the domestic market, falling short by 3 billion pounds – the beef equivalent of 3.9 million cattle.



These facts suggest cattle prices should be on the rise, an expectation further reinforced by the widest gap between domestic beef production and consumption our industry has seen in at least 40 years.



So, why have fed-cattle prices fallen from $96.50 in December 2005 to $86.01 in March 2006? That's a loss of over $125 per head, even while domestic beef production remains well short of consumption.



Processed-beef imports, as well as imports of live foreign cattle, are being used to satisfy the ever-growing U.S. appetite for beef, meaning the amount of such imports rapidly continues to multiply. Let's look at the facts:



In 2002, the U.S. imported a record 5.1 billion pounds of beef and live-cattle equivalent, an 18 percent share of the domestic beef market, which resulted in depressed domestic cattle prices.



When the Canadian border closed in 2003, imported beef volume and live-cattle equivalent fell to 4.3 billion pounds, a 16 percent share of the domestic beef market. As a result, U.S. cattle producers recaptured 2 percent of their domestic beef market, and U.S. cattle prices rose.



In 2004, while fighting back to regain that lost market share, importers procured record volumes of processed beef, but the ban on Canadian cattle impeded those efforts and live-cattle imports remained well below 2002 levels. In 2004, the volume of imported beef and live-cattle equivalent totaled 4.7 billion pounds, which caused the importers' share of the domestic market to rebound to 17 percent.



In July 2005, the Canadian border reopened, and live-cattle imports expanded significantly, restoring the volume of imported beef and live-cattle equivalent to the 2002 level of 5.1 billion pounds, consequently allowing importers to again realize their previous 18 percent record share of the domestic beef market.



This escalating trend suggests imports more than likely will capture a record share of the 2006 domestic beef market, which will put significant downward pressure on U.S. cattle prices.



2006 data already show that January imports of processed beef were 35 million pounds more than those in January 2005, and that January 2006 imports of live cattle were 115,000 head greater than in January 2005.



Unless Congress takes immediate action to implement Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) so consumers have the right to choose either U.S. beef or foreign beef, producers will not be able to compete against these soaring imports. How long will Congress continue to deprive U.S. producers of their right to differentiate their beef products from foreign supplies?



It is a real travesty that the United States – a country founded on competition and free enterprise – has allowed itself to be held captive by multinational meatpackers that do not want U.S. consumers to know where their beef is produced. COOL is an essential tool our industry needs to compete against meatpackers' efforts to replace domestic beef production with unmarked imported beef. Consumers need to be fully aware that when they see the USDA inspection stamp on beef, that mark does not mean the beef is of U.S. origin. Consumers need COOL so they can identify beef of U.S. origin.

 

[PORKER]

HOW ABOUT IMPORTED POULTRY AND ITS PRODUCTS?????
April 15, 2006
Bird Flu Virus May Be Spread by Smuggling
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
MILAN — Two vans of undercover police inspectors pulled up at a storefront in Milan in March, their target neither terrorists nor drugs.

Picking their way through a refrigerator at the back of a Chinese grocery store off a piazza, the agents found their quarry: bags of duck feet.

This followed a similar raid at a Milan warehouse a few months ago that yielded three million packages of chicken meat smuggled from China.

There is increasing evidence that a thriving international trade in smuggled poultry — including live birds, chicks and meat — is helping spread bird flu, experts say.

Poultry smuggling is a huge business that poses a unique threat: The (A)H5N1 bird flu virus is robust enough to survive not just in live birds but also in frozen meat, feathers, bones and even on cages, though it dies with cooking.

"No one knows the real numbers, but they are large," said Timothy E. Moore, director of federal projects at the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center at Kansas State University.

"Behind illegal drug traffic, illegal animals are No. 2," he said. "And there is no doubt in my mind that this will play a prominent role in the spread of this disease. It looks to be the main way it is spreading in some parts of the world," along with the migration of wild birds.

Particularly when smuggled live, poultry can easily pass the disease on to birds in other countries. Though the risk of transmission in, say, infected frozen duck feet in a restaurant is minimal, poultry parts can also spread the disease to birds when used as raw feed or in fertilizer on farms.

Poultry from bird-flu-infected countries has been banned in Europe since 2002, but smuggling seriously undermines those bans.

"In spite of the E.U. ban, we are still seizing Chinese poultry products," said Gen. Emilio Borghini, commander of the Military Police Health Service in Italy.

Many experts are convinced that the illegal import of infected live chicks introduced the virus into Nigeria. Its first cases were confirmed in February, but soon the virus appeared on poultry farms in multiple areas, leading to the widespread culling of birds in a country that can ill afford the loss.

And yet, the disease has not been found in wild birds there.

In early April, Vietnamese health officials said chickens smuggled over the border from China had reintroduced bird flu into their country, which had reported no cases for four months.

No one has any precise sense of the breadth of the trade, or the extent of its role in spreading bird flu, because until recently poultry smuggling was regarded mostly as a nuisance.

There is extensive smuggling between China and Africa. In the developing world, the illegal trade often has economic roots, to avoid duties. But there is a strong cultural element as well. For example, Asian immigrants seek out poultry products, like feet, that may not be available in the West. The illegal meat seized in Italy has been at Chinese stores or warehouses servicing Chinese restaurants.

"I would love to have a map of illegal trade, but I'm embarrassed to say we don't have a good handle on it," said Dr. Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. "We all know it occurs and we are worried, but what we see confiscated is only the tip of the iceberg."

The trade is hard to control because huge amounts cross borders in trucks, carts, planes and boats each day. Smuggled meat from Asia is often loaded in containers with a mishmash of other goods, like clothes, toys and furniture.

"We're aware that the risk to public health can be hidden in these containers, but thousands of containers pass through Italian ports and it is impossible to inspect them all," said Mario Pantano, director of the Military Police Health Service in southern Italy, who said his staff had found poultry products stuffed into shoes.

Late last year, his team discovered 260 tons of poultry meat scattered among several containers at a port in southern Italy, destined for Moldova, in Eastern Europe. Because of improper paperwork, the inspectors started asking questions and determined that the shipment had come from China.

"The meat was officially destined for countries on the doorstep of the European Union and we knew that the chickens could be relabeled and illegally re-enter Italy for our consumption," Mr. Pantano said.

Although many countries attribute the spread of (A)H5N1 to migratory fowl, many ornithologists say the evidence often points to smuggling.

"We believe it is spread by both bird migration and trade, but that trade, particularly illegal trade, is more important," said Wade Hagemeijer, a bird flu expert at the Netherlands-based Wetlands International, which has been studying the role of migrating birds.

Although bird flu has now been detected on many farms in several African nations, there have been only a handful of reports of infections in wild birds on the continent, supporting the notion that trade is most important there.

"We're been looking for it in wild birds for the last two months and it is surprising that we've come up with zero," Dr. Lubroth said.

The effect of smuggling can sometimes be direct, when sick birds are smuggled onto farms. The virus strain found on the farms involved in Nigeria's first outbreak, in northern Kano State, closely matched those found on Chinese farms, Mr. Hagemeijer said.

Nancy Morgan, an economist at F.A.O., said smuggling could have easily introduced bird flu into Nigeria and Egypt, the two African countries with the most extensive bird flu problems.

"In developing countries, the border controls are marginal at best," she said. "As long as there's economic incentive, it will happen."

Producers in Egypt and Nigeria frequently import day-old chicks for about 20 cents a bird, she said, because it is easier to buy them than to master the delicate technology of hatching. In Nigeria, all the chicks were smuggled and therefore not inspected, because all imports were banned by the government to protect a young domestic industry.

Poultry products can also bring the virus into a country: infected chicken parts in feed or fertilizer, secondhand cages once used to house infected birds, or cheap meat that ends up being used on a farm or in a home where other birds are kept.

The main concern is China, a country with a serious bird flu problem.

General Borghini, the Italian medical officer, referring to a type of dark-skinned chicken that according to traditional Asian belief has medicinal properties, said, "Black chicken is our big, big headache."

Several months ago, health inspectors in Milan noticed that all the Chinese restaurants in Milan bought their poultry from a single distributor. When they conducted a surprise raid at the warehouse of the distributor, Euro Food International, they discovered three million packages of meat from China.

In the United States, Dr. Moore, of the Kansas State University, worries particularly about poorly regulated markets in live birds that cater to Muslims and Jews who want poultry slaughtered according to religious custom.
**************************How long will Congress continue to deprive U.S. animal protien producers of their right to differentiate their meat products from foreign supplies With COOL?