KINDERSLEY, Sask. – Asia is an offal market for Canadian beef producers.
And that’s a good thing, because it’s the only place that seems to be willing to pay top dollar for what the rest of the world considers just a load of tripe.
“Often it’s the only high value market for that beef,” said Canada Beef Export Federation president Jim Graham. “Otherwise it’s rendered at a very low price.”
A number of speakers at the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association annual convention in Kindersley last week discussed beef’s stagnant and declining market share in North American grocery sales, but also the growing market in Asia.
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“I don’t know if you can stop that,” said Virginia-based agricultural guru Dennis Avery about beef’s slide off the American consumer’s plate. “And I don’t much care.”
He said growing markets for beef in the Far East and the rest of the developing world might make small fluctuations in North American meat market share a secondary concern.
“If beef can become the premiere meat for 8.5 billion consumers, (cattle producers will be fine).”
Canadian exports to Japan, the most prosperous Asian market, are up and growing. According to Graham, Canada’s beef exports to Japan are up 77.7 percent in the first four months of this year compared to the same period in 1996.
That puts Canada on course to sell Japan 19,000 tonnes of beef this year, compared to 14,226 last year, Graham said. The export federation’s goal is to sell 75,000 tonnes of beef per year to Japan by 2000.
But that’s still small compared to Canadian exports to the United States.
In 1996, the U.S. imported 188,551 tonnes of Canadian beef.
Joan Perrin, of the Beef Information Centre, said Canadian exports to the U.S. are up significantly over the past 10 years, but overall, beef is slowly losing its place in the North American market.
Wilf Campbell, a Beef Information Centre committee member, said beef has lost one percent of the meat market every year for the past 20 years.
Beef now holds 45 percent of the market. Campbell said beef promotion is important because if the beef industry doesn’t stop the slide, analysts say it could drop to a 25 percent share of the market.
“We’ll be the occasional meal if we don’t watch out,” Campbell said.
Graham was asked if Europe, now that the World Trade Organization has ordered it to stop banning beef treated with growth hormones, could be another market backstop against the declining North American market.
His answer wasn’t encouraging.
“They’re not short of ideas,” said Graham. “They’ll figure out something else to keep us out.”
