Cattlemen Await Results of US-China Beef Talks

U.S. negotiators are in China this week to ideally finalize an agreement to reopen U.S. beef trade to China, with sources indicating the effort was aimed at getting details in place of food safety protocols that would allow U.S. beef to officially re-enter the Chinese market.Acting USDA Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Jason Hafemeister is heading up the U.S. negotiation effort which is said to be focusing on areas such as the ability to track animals and the use of growth promoters/hormones and/or beta-agonists.On the animal tracking side, indications ahead of the detailed discussions underway in China this week that the U.S. had gotten China to agree to a system where U.S. would have to track the birth and slaughter locations. Some indicate this is less onerous that a system which would require tracking of the animal throughout its life as it moved through the production system.On the issue of beta-agonists, China bars the presence of those compounds such as ractopamine. This could become a limiting factor for US beef exports to China, some observers note, since there is only a small number of U.S. cattle that are a part of USDA's Non-Hormone Treated Cattle effort.Still others note that short-term gains for the US beef industry could be tempered as they expect regulations and red tape to be a factor. Similarly, others point out some of the initial shipments could come via supplies that have previously been transshipped from Hong Kong and now could be directly sent to China.