Don’t ask Ted Haney to look for an upside in Europe’s problems with mad cow disease and the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
The president of the Canada Beef Export Federation welcomes the day when European livestock producers can put those problems behind them.
Any gains to Canada’s beef exports would be slight, said Haney. The downside is that a disease like mad cow disease, more accurately known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, can shake consumer confidence in countries that import beef, regardless of where the beef comes from.
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Beef consumption in Europe went into a tailspin because of consumer fears that the human equivalent of BSE could be passed to them.
But those concerns have spread, said Haney. In South Korea, for example, sales of beef have fallen 20 percent since media attention was focused on BSE.
“There is no upside to an animal health food safety issue to any market.”
The Canada Beef Export Federation has had inquiries from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, which traditionally import beef from the European Union. But Haney said those regions are used to paying for beef raised under the EU’s highly subsidized system.
“Quite frankly, their price expectations are significantly below our price points.”
Haney said Canadian cattle producers also feel an affinity toward Europe’s beleaguered producers.
Dave Weaber figures Europeans would have to get “awful hungry” before the fallout from mad cow disease improves exports of Canadian and American beef.
Like Haney, he doesn’t think the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom will do much to bolster North American beef exports to Europe.
“They haven’t gotten hungry enough,” said Weaber, research director for Cattle-Fax, an American cattle marketing information service.
“They haven’t lost enough confidence in their own product to take ours. That’s what it boils down to.”
He said the biggest roadblock is the EU’s long-standing ban on Canadian and American beef that is raised using growth hormones.
Most American cattle producers prefer using growth hormones in their herds. European customers do not pay enough of a premium to justify the challenges and cost of shipping them hormone-free beef.
No obvious increase
Weaber said American beef exports grew sharply last year because of increased purchases from countries such as Mexico, South Korea and Japan. But looking over the export numbers, he found no evidence that the mad cow scare has improved American beef exports to other parts of the world.
Cargill Foods communications director Mark Klein agreed.
He said Europe’s problems have not helped Cargill’s beef and pork exports in any meaningful way. Prolonged media attention fans consumer anxiety about the safety of their food, he added.
“I think it is as much a negative as a positive.”
Cargill is the second largest beef processor in North America and the fifth largest pork processor in the United States
Klein said any export gains made at the expense of Europe would most likely be in Asia where consumers are highly conscious of food safety.
“I would assume that North American beef does have some positive underpinnings in existing export markets, particularly Japan.”
But he said that during the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Taiwan a couple of years ago, Cargill did not find new export opportunities as Taiwan’s pork production dwindled.
“You would have thought that would have developed opportunities for us there, but it really didn’t turn out that way.”
Martin Rice, executive director of the Canadian Pork Council, said he is seeing some strengthening of demand for pork in Asia, which could be due to people switching from beef to pork.
There also have been inquiries from Europe for Canadian pork, said Rice. But tight EU restrictions make it difficult to get Canada’s pork into that market.
