June 15, 2007

 

Australia's Northern Territory to restore its live cattle exports to Vietnam

 

 

The inspection of Vietnamese meat representatives in Australia's Northern Territory is hoped to resume live cattle trade between the two countries.

 

The visitors could include representatives of Vietnam's major food processor and frozen-meat trader, the Ho-Chi-Minh-City-based Vissan.

 

The expected arrival of the Vietnamese delegation follows an exploratory visit to Vietnam by Northern Territory Cattleman's Association executive director Stuart Kenny; Live Exporters Association executive director Lachlan McKinnon and NT Primary Industry Department director pastoral Alister Trier.

 

The trio, who visited Nha Trung, Vung Tau and Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam, were part of a Territory business-government delegation.

 

The delegation also included Chief Minister Clare Martin's assistant director for strategic research, Jeff Stewart, and Charles Darwin University's International Marketing and Recruitment Manager Fiona Richards.

 

Richards has invited students, especially public servants from Hanoi, in her university.

 

Cattle from the Northern Territory would be either slaughtered soon after arrival in Vietnam or first fattened in feed lots as the prospect for sales of live cattle in Vietnam was high, says Trier.

 

About 70 percent of the Vietnam's nearly 85 million people were less than 35 years old and increasingly consumer conscious while the country's Gross Domestic Product was growing at between seven and nine percent each year.

 

Territory cattle were better suited to Vietnam than those from Queensland and it was hoped that the prospective Vietnamese delegation included visits to Indonesian feed lots as part of its itinerary.

 

Such a visit would help identify the responsibility of both seller and buyer, he said.

 

McKinnon said everyone was very keen to export live cattle to Vietnam provided that right infrastructure is present and government regulations dealt with before exports could begin.

 

The proposed visit by the Vietnamese should help eliminate difficulties that destroyed a previous effort to export Territory cattle to Vietnam in the 1990s, according to McKinnon.

 

Since then Queensland - boosted by a promotional visit to Hanoi by the state's premier Peter Beatty about seven years ago - has provided cattle, including breeding stock, to Vietnam.