China’s ban on Australian beef costing hundreds of millions and putting people out of work

China’s ban on beef imports from several Australian abattoirs has cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars while eight meatworks wait to resume trade.

Last year, exports of red meat to China were valued at about $3 billion, making it Australia’s most lucrative agriculture export market but the Australian Meat Industry Council says sales have fallen by almost 30 per cent year-on-year.

Regardless, the council’s chief executive, Patrick Hutchinson, said Australian beef exports were on track for the “second-biggest year on record to China” referring to both volume and value.

“[Australian] beef supply roughly has been reduced now by a third … the suspended companies made up a hell of a lot of that, so it is hard to quantify, but certainly it’s in the many hundreds of millions of dollars that we’ve gone backwards on,” he said.

Mr Hutchinson said China’s suspensions had also cost jobs, but it was difficult to distinguish to what extent as the industry met challenges associated with COVID-19, supply issues, high livestock prices, a high Australian dollar and seasonal shutdowns.

Mr Hutchinson said no reason had been given for the suspension and the Australian owners were working with the Government to understand why it had been banned indefinitely.

“It (Meramist) represents less than 1 per cent of the total beef exports, I think it is around about 3,000 tonnes a year, which is around about 20 containers a month,” he said.

Mr Hutchinson said he did not want to “pontificate in the media” as to why China may have applied the ban, but said that market procedures and protocols often changed for a number of reasons.

“If China really wanted to send us a message loud and clear my assumption would be that they would have taken out a number of larger exporters of frozen and chilled product, which they didn’t do.”

ABC News