February 16, 2012

 

 

Matters on increasing market access for American beef, a new pilot programme for regulatory cooperation, and opening the US market to China's poultry processed is what US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack plans to discuss when he meets with Chinese Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu this week.

 

In a February 13 conference call with reporters, Vilsack said he will hold a "one-on-one" bilateral meeting with Han in Iowa prior to the first ever US-China agriculture symposium, which is set to kick off in Des Moines on February 16.

 

Because the meeting will be relatively brief compared with the two-day Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) discussions - held most recently in Chengdu last November - Vilsack said that he would not be able to cover the "full scope" of agriculture issues in his meeting with Han.

 

"But we're obviously interested in reopening the beef market more fully," Vilsack said, a reference to the fact that US beef exports have been locked out of China for years. The country implemented a ban in the wake of a reported outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) - or "mad cow" disease - in the state of Washington in 2003.

 

"It's also obvious that we have a joint interest in better synchronising our regulatory processes as it relates to new technologies," Vilsack added. "The current process in China we think delays implementation of new technologies, and could potentially create some challenges in terms of trade with some of our commodities, and so we want to make sure to do everything that we possibly can to create a more efficient regulatory process between our two countries."

 

"We think there's an opportunity at least on a pilot basis to begin a process where we do a more synchronised effort, saving time and hopefully enabling their science to be introduced more quickly and our science to be introduced more quickly," the agriculture secretary said.

 

Vilsack was alluding to the fact that Chinese regulators will not even consider an application to approve imports of new biotechnology traits for major commodities like corn and soy until the US or a third country has already approved it. This can lead to years-long delays in rolling out new biotechnology, and lead to trade disruptions.

 

The potential for asynchronous approvals to cause problems was exemplified in a legal dispute last year that pitted biotechnology companies against grains shipping firms. In that case, grains shippers stopped accepting a certain type of biotech corn that many farmers had already planted because China had not approved it and segregating it would have been too costly.

 

But Vilsack also broke new ground in his mention of a pilot programme. It was not immediately clear whether this was an idea that had been previously vetted with China, or whether it would be open to such a proposal.

 

Lastly, the secretary noted that his department is continuing to seek information from China about steps it will take to ensure that its safety standards can be considered "equivalent" with the US, allowing it to export processed poultry that has been raised elsewhere to the US.

 

Vilsack said it would be a "longer road" before poultry raised in China could be exported to the US because of the additional measures that the country must take.

 

The US meat industry views granting China equivalency for exports of processed poultry - which has been delayed since 2006 -- as a step that will pave the way for China to relax its restrictions toward American meat. Meanwhile, consumer groups have been pushing for the administration to weigh its equivalency determination carefully.