CALF_News_October_November_2020

16 CALF News • October | November 2020 • www.calfnews.net T he U.S. imports and exports many agricultural products, including beef, and there are many regulations affect- ing these sales – some imposed by our country and some by the countries we trade with. Phillip Seng, affiliate professor in Colorado State University’s Department of Animal Sciences, worked many years for the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) and traveled to more than 100 different countries. He says that often our trading relations are difficult because of differences in perspectives. “The United Kingdom and the United States are planning to get together and resume dialogue in early September to discuss trade, and some longstanding issues still need to be addressed such as our different philosophies of livestock production/processing. They still worry about animal welfare concerns, our ‘chlo- rine chicken’ and hormone beef,” he says. Some of the same issues from 30 years ago are still there as they talk about the new agreement. In the early years of trading, the U.S. was technologically so far in advance that everyone looked at us as the unquestioned No. 1. “Then in the 1980s, Europe started to challenge us on the way we produce our food. There have been other challengers, as well,” Seng explains. “As we worked in many of these inter- national negotiations, there were about 12 different sets of negotiations with GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), the predecessor to theWTO (World Trade Organization).We realized that it’s not just tariffs and quotas that are impediments to our exports; it is often health and sanitation issues, differences in standards, perception of science, etc. Harmonization of standards became the vogue talk, and now we talk about regula- tory convergence,” he says. U.S. Standards There are different ways countries export beef.“The cornerstone of our approach has always been that we want sovereignty over our own meat plants,” Seng explains.“We don’t want inspectors from other countries to come in to check out a certain plant. The U.S approach is that we have a system that is fair and transparent – both for consumers here and internationally, to build trust. It’s the same system throughout all our slaugh- ter plants, and we have U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspectors in all plants. “We do have auditors come in from other countries, but they weren’t coming to audit individual plants. They just audit plants to see that our system is working. From time to time you’d see China delist a plant in a certain country, or Europe delist a plant. We saw this with Australia recently, in issues with China. Maintaining sovereignty over our plants has been a key component to our food safety apparatus but also for us going forward internationally. “This is why you might see another country have access to a certain market quicker than we do, because they will let certain plants be approved vs. a whole system,” he says. Seng contends the United States has what he calls the “holy trinity” for food safety: the Food and Drug Administra- tion (FDA) that has to approve drugs/ compounds that go into food animals; the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), also involved while the animal is alive; and FSIS on the meat side. The Export Library Cheyenne McEndaffer, director of export services/access for the Western Hemisphere, Europe, CIS and Africa at the U.S. Meat Export Federation, says the USDA-FSIS Export Library is considered the Bible of export require- ments and publicly available. It lists the regulations/requirements for most U.S. export countries. By Heather Smith Thomas, Contributing Editor International Trade Regulations – a Background Cheyenne McEndaffer, USMEF director of export services/access, speaks to U.S. exporters about issues that can cause shipments of U.S. red meat to be delayed or rejected upon arrival.