Getting Canadian product to China is a priority for beef marketers, but movement to that country continues to be slow.
For the Canadian Beef Breeds Council sending live purebred cattle would be a coup.
“They are asking for genetics and we have to work on getting live cattle access,” said Michael Latimer, executive director of the council during its annual meeting in Calgary March 28.
Last June, the organization’s president Garner Deobald was named co-chair of the China-Canada Beef Industry Alliance.
Created last year at the National Symposium on Applied Techniques in Beef Production in Beijing, the alliance mandate is to open the doors to live cattle and beef.
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“They are in a place right now where they recognize they can improve their beef production. So much of it is based on the dairy industry,” Deobald said.
The Chinese are interested in importing Angus, Hereford, Simmental, Charolais and Limousin breeding stock sometime in the future.
“The biggest market for us will be on the beef side and it will be live cattle,” he said.
“There are all kinds of opportunities there but in all cases you need to have relationships with a Chinese company and without that nothing will happen,” he said.
Since BSE export rules changed and no Canadian beef or dairy cattle moved into China. New Zealand and Australia filled in the gap.
The market opened to Canadian frozen boneless beef from cattle younger than 30 months in 2014. The Chinese agreed to reopen after the world rejected Canadian beef following the discovery of BSE in 2003. Work continues to expand access to bone in, fresh chilled and offal but food safety requirements are strict.
The beef breeds council represents about 10,000 producers of purebred beef cattle.
