The opinions are a win for cell-cultivated meat companies, executives said, because it means observant followers of Judaism and Islam could one day consume their products.

“It’s another marker around making cultivated meat a real solution,” said Josh Tetrick, CEO of GOOD Meat.

Cultivated meat is currently only sold in tiny quantities in the United States and Singapore, but companies hope private and public investors will infuse the sector with enough cash to scale production and alter diets around the world.

Cultivated meat is derived from a sample of animal cells that are fed a nutrient mix and grown in steel vats, avoiding the need for land-intensive industrial farming operations and slaughterhouses.

Companies in the fledgling industry hope their product will appeal to vegans and vegetarians as well as climate-conscious meat-eaters.

GOOD convened a panel of three sharia experts who reviewed the company’s production and on Sunday said cultivated meat can be halal if, among other factors, the cells from which the meat is made come from an animal slaughtered according to Islamic law.

Though the Oakland-area company’s chicken does not currently meet that standard, the opinion provides a roadmap for the industry to make halal products, Tetrick said in an interview.

The Orthodox Union (OU), the largest kosher certification agency, on Sept. 6 said cultivated chicken produced by Israeli company SuperMeat met its standards because the chicken cells were not fed any animal ingredients and were extracted from a fertilized egg before any blood spots appeared.

SuperMeat and the OU are working on broader guidelines for the industry, company CEO Ido Savir said.

More than 12 million people in the United States eat kosher products and eight million eat halal products, according to the OU and Islamic Services of America, a halal certification agency.

Regulators cleared cultivated chicken for U.S. consumption earlier this year and it has since been served at some high-end restaurants.

— Reporting for Reuters by Leah Douglas.

The post Lab-grown meat can be kosher and halal, experts say appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The bill would set out processor fines of $5,000 per pound of beef that doesn’t meet label standards.

COOL, or country-of-origin labelling, surged back into the headlines this year, eight years after the U.S.’s mandatory COOL system was repealed in 2015 after a bitter trade dispute between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

In March, the U.S. proposed a regulation that would require animals to be born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the U.S. (as opposed to just processed), in order for beef to be labelled as U.S.-made. Labels would be voluntary rather than mandatory.

The Canadian meat sector argued the differences would be largely semantic and, in practice, the results would be much the same as mandatory COOL.

In January, proposed legislation was also introduced in the U.S. Senate, which sought to re-instate mandatory COOL rules on beef. It relied on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to bring back the requirements without prompting a trade dispute. That bill was read twice before being shifted to the body’s ag committee.

The recent proposal reportedly dovetails with that January legal effort.

Skepticism

University of Guelph associate professor Rakhal Sarker, who researches the economics of agri-food trade, noted similar policy has previously failed.

“You know what happened to the previous COOL, right? It didn’t succeed, and WTO (World Trade Organization) authorized Canada and Mexico to impose duties on U.S. products so they can recover the damage,” he said.

He expects American politicians will keep that track record in mind when assessing the new proposal.

Canadian Cattle Association executive vice-president Dennis Laycraft similarly suggested the recent push is not unprecedented.

“There’s been a number of different senators who have been trying to bring some language to bring back mandatory country of origin labeling,” he said.

“The [Biden] administration … are still saying anything that is done has to be compliant with the World Trade Organization and their international obligations… What’s being proposed clearly, in this particular bill, would not be, so they don’t believe it’s likely to go anywhere, but we follow it closely anyway.”

Laycraft said previous rules with similar goals proved financially inefficient.

“The irony in that is, when those goals were in, that were eventually overturned at the WTO, their own analysis showed … the previous measure would have cost the U.S. industry over $8 billion,” he said.

“It led to segregation within the system. Cattle that we exported either as feeder or animals that were ready to go to processing were discounted about $45 an animal on average.”

A similar labelling plan in Canada has little traction, he added.

“For the most part, that’s been fairly well addressed on our side. We have a trademark label that many retailers use.”

Sarker said that even if this particular American proposal were to pass, it would likely pose no major threat to the Canadian ag sector.

“It will reduce the progress of e-commerce and probably that would have a ripple effect in Canada,” Sarker said. “But I don’t think the e-commerce is so big that it will have any significant damage to our major sectors.”

The post U.S. COOL proposal unlikely to affect Canadian beef appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

JBS in a securities filing offered a one-time dividend payment of about 2.2 billion reais (C$621 million) to coax investors into backing the longstanding plan.

Shareholders will decide whether to accept the proposal at a general meeting yet to be scheduled.

JBS global CEO Gilberto Tomazoni said it is possible that the meeting will take place in 30 days. He believes that by December all steps to complete the transaction will have been taken so that the company’s shares can start trading in New York.

The proposed structure will use a Netherlands-based vehicle called JBS NV and have Class A shares with one voting right and Class B shares with 10 votes, JBS said. JBS NV’s class A common shares would trade in the U.S. and Brazilian depositary receipts would be listed for trading in Sao Paulo.

JBS’ management has repeatedly made the case that a U.S. listing would reduce its cost of capital and help its shares trade at multiples closer to peers such as Tyson Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride, which it controls.

Analysts at Bradesco BBI agreed that the much-awaited move will help close the valuation gap to its main peer in the U.S., referring to Tyson.

Sao Paulo broker Genial said JBS is a “buy” as a proposed listing in the U.S. will help improve its governance standards.

“A dual listing would better align JBS’ corporate structure it to global peers, which we believe could be received positively by investors,” Goldman Sachs said.

JBS in 2007 was the first Brazilian meat packer to go public. That year saw JBS embark on an acquisition spree in the U.S., followed by its purchase of the XL Foods beef packing business in Canada in 2013. In years prior, it had expanded capacity in Brazil and bought plants in Argentina, marking the start of its aggressive internationalization.

The U.S. listing has been in the works for the better part of a decade, but was postponed in part due to a 2017 corporate corruption scandal in Brazil and then again amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

JBS gets the lion’s share of its revenue from the U.S. market, where it processes beef, poultry and pork products for domestic consumption and export.

The JBS USA arm also oversees the company’s operations in Canada, which today include the former XL beef slaughter and packing plant at Brooks, Alta. and case-ready meat plants at Calgary and at Belleville, Ont.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ana Mano and Roberto Samora in Sao Paulo.

The post Brazil’s JBS reboots plan to list shares in New York appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“One of the great strengths of the U.S.-Canada bilateral relationship is the successful integration of our meat and livestock sectors,” the submission said.

The Canadian government made its submission June 9 as part of U.S. consultations on voluntary country of origin labeling (vCOOL) for U.S. meat, poultry and eggs.

The Biden administration proposed the rule in March in response to lobbying from U.S. ranchers, Reuters reported at the time. The rule would limit “Product of USA” and similar labels to products derived from animals that were born, raised and slaughtered in the U.S. However, it would not require products to carry an origin label.

Under current rules, animal products can be labelled as “Product of USA” if animals were processed in the U.S., even if they were born and raised elsewhere.

In 2022, total U.S.-Canada trade in live cattle, hogs, poults and chicks, hatching eggs, beef and pork was worth more than US$8 billion, according to the recent Canadian submission.

Canada has argued that supply chains operating under the proposed rules will have to segregate Canadian and U.S. animals and products. This would be costly and inefficient and discourage companies from using Canadian inputs.

A similar rationale led to the downfall of vCOOL’s mandatory predecessor, struck down in 2015 following a World Trade Organization challenge that ruled in favour of the complainants, Canada and Mexico.

The new proposed rule could also harm U.S. producers, the Canadian government said.

“For example, in recent years, there has been an increase in live cattle exports from the United States to Canada due to feedlot capacity expansion in Canada, higher processing volumes, and strong demand for beef,” the submission read.

“Under the new proposed rule, if an American rancher sends an animal to a Canadian feedlot, by virtue of availability, proximity, or economics, that is then sent back to the U.S. for slaughter and processing, that product would no longer be allowed to bear a ‘Product of USA’ claim.”

The rule also fails to account for supply-chain integration in border states and provinces, the submission claims. It would put undue pressure on processing facilities, especially small or medium-sized plants, to source American inputs when Canadian inputs are closer at hand.

The Canadian government requested that the U.S. “pauses and reconsiders the proposed rule in order to allow for consultations between Canadian and U.S. officials.” –– Manitoba Co-operator staff

The post Canada warns VCOOL would sabotage shared Canada-U.S. goals, supply chains appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

If the proposal is passed by parliament, Italian industry will not be allowed to produce food or feed “from cell cultures or tissues derived from vertebrate animals,” the bill seen by Reuters said.

A breach of the rules could result in fines of up to 60,000 euros (C$88,509).

“Laboratory products in our opinion do not guarantee quality, well-being and the protection of our culture, our tradition,” said minister Francesco Lollobrigida, a senior member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party.

Meloni’s nationalist administration has pledged to shield Italy’s food from technological innovations seen as harmful, and renamed the agriculture ministry the “ministry for agriculture and food sovereignty.”

Agriculture lobby Coldiretti praised the move against “synthetic food,” saying a ban is needed to safeguard home production “from the attacks of multinational companies.”

The bill stipulates that factories where violations occur can be shut down and producers may lose their right to obtain public funding for up to three years.

Angry reactions

The initiative angered organizations supporting the development of “cell-based” agricultural products across Europe, as well as animal rights groups.

“The passing of such a law would shut down the economic potential of this nascent field in Italy, holding back scientific progress and climate mitigation efforts,” said Alice Ravenscroft, head of policy at the Good Food Institute Europe.

Food companies’ network Cellular Agriculture Europe said Italy was limiting options for consumers who are concerned about animal welfare and the environmental impact of their food choices.

Anti-vivisection group LAV called the bill “an ideological, anti-scientific crusade against progress.” It said lab-meat, which is produced from the cells of living animals, represented a good alternative to intensive breeding and slaughtering.

The ban on cell-based meat is not the only initiative from Meloni to block non-conventional food from being served on Italian tables.

Last week, she said the government was preparing a rush of decrees to introduce information labels on products containing or derived from insects, amid a debate on the use of cricket flour.

“People must be able to make an informed choice,” she wrote on Twitter.

— Angelo Amante is a Reuters correspondent in Rome.

The post Italy moves to ban lab-grown food in drive to protect tradition appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) on Monday announced they plan to publish a new proposed rule on U.S. meat origin labels for a 60-day public comment period.

USDA said in a release the new rule will offer “new regulatory requirements to better align the voluntary ‘Product of USA’ label claim with consumer understanding of what the claim means.”

USDA said Monday it undertook a review starting in July 2021 “to understand what the ‘Product of USA’ claim means to consumers and inform planned rulemaking.”

The department said it found in a related survey of U.S. consumers that “a significant portion believ(es) the claim means that the product was made from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States.”

A “Product of USA” label claim would continue to be voluntary under the new rule, and would also still be eligible for “generic label approval” — meaning it would not need FSIS pre-approval before it could be used on regulated product.

However, the new rule would require that supporting documentation for so-labelled products be kept on file for FSIS personnel to verify.

Apart from the “authorized” label claims for ‘Product of USA’ or ‘Made in the USA,’ the rule also proposes to allow other voluntary U.S. origin claims seen on meat, poultry and egg products sold in the marketplace.

However, those other claims would need to include a description on the package of “all preparation and processing steps that occurred in the United States upon which the claim is made.”

Those other label claims are described as “qualified” claims. “Sliced and packaged in the United States, using imported pork” was given as an example of a qualified claim.

Currently, USDA said, FSIS-regulated products coming from animals that may have been born, raised and slaughtered in another country but are “minimally processed” in U.S. facilities may currently be labeled as ‘Product of USA.’

That policy, USDA said, “may be causing false impressions about the origin of FSIS-regulated products in the U.S. marketplace.”

“American consumers expect that when they buy a meat product at the grocery store, the claims they see on the label mean what they say,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday in the department’s release. “These proposed changes are intended to provide consumers with accurate information to make informed purchasing decisions.”

‘No evidence’

However, the North American Meat Institute, a U.S. lobby group representing beef, pork, lamb, veal and turkey packers and processors, said the proposed new rule “uses the same standard” as the mandatory COOL statute Washington repealed in 2015.

Mandatory COOL was first developed during the Clinton administration, passed near the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and put in place during the Obama administration in 2009. It imposed mandatory origin labels for beef, pork, lamb, chicken and goat meat and certain other perishable commodities where sold at retail in the U.S.

Canada and Mexico responded by challenging COOL at the World Trade organization and in U.S. courts, because the COOL rules — as applied by Vilsack as the Obama administration’s ag secretary — called for U.S. processors of meat from imported animals to provide labels that detailed where the specific animals involved in a given package of meat were born, raised and slaughtered.

The costs involved in segregating animals and production lines to follow the COOL law prompted some U.S. packers and processors to restrict or halt their imports or cut the prices they paid for Canadian cattle and hogs. Some estimates at the time pegged Canadian cattle and hog producers’ losses to reduced prices and lost sales at over $8 billion.

Washington-based NAMI said the U.S. government “lost four times” against Canada and Mexico before the WTO in 2015 authorized those countries to levy over US$1 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods if the COOL rule wasn’t withdrawn.

By comparison, the new rule announced this week would limit the use of voluntary ‘Product of USA’ claims, so that only products made from livestock born, raised, harvested and processed in the U.S. could be so labelled, NAMI said.

But such a rule, NAMI said, “will have a discriminatory effect, causing meat packers and processors who wish to make the claim to segregate cattle, hogs, and meat from other nations.”

That segregation “was the basis for the WTO finding and is what allows Canada and Mexico to levy tariffs on American goods,” NAMI said.

Canada and Mexico “still retain that (WTO) authorization” for retaliatory tariffs, NAMI said, and any new label law that uses the same standard as mandatory COOL would allow those countries to “initiate retaliation with no further action by the WTO.”

NAMI also claims the proposed new label rule would actually be “broader than mandatory COOL” because it would also cover processed products, and products intended for foodservice, none of which were subject to the COOL rule.

The lobby group emphasized consumer opinion and transparency are “important to the meat and poultry industry” but said “there is no evidence this rule will increase already high consumer demand for meat and poultry products.”

Also, while supporters of the former COOL and the proposed new rule “like to claim” mandatory COOL increased the prices U.S. beef producers received in the years before that rule’s repeal, “this assertion ignores basic supply and demand fundamentals,” NAMI said.

“In 2015, cattle prices saw record highs because there was a limited supply of cattle to harvest increasing demand. And today, without COOL, cattle prices are again approaching record highs, also due to supply and demand.”

The proposed new rule also “does not consider the integrated nature of the North American meat and poultry industry,” NAMI said. “Livestock and meat products from Canada and Mexico are shipped, tariff-free, across the border for slaughter and processing in the United States. Likewise, meat products are shipped from the United States to Canada and Mexico.”

That “integrated competitive market” allows for more affordable beef and pork for U.S. consumers, NAMI said.

“Unfortunately, this proposed rule is problematic for many reasons. USDA should have considered more than public sentiment on an issue that impacts international trade,” NAMI CEO Julie Anna Potts said in a release.

Will review

In a separate statement Tuesday, Canada’s Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Trade Minister Mary Ng concurred that the Canadian and U.S. meat and livestock sectors are “highly integrated” and that collaboration “contributes to the growth and resilience of farmers and processors on both sides of the border.”

Canada “remains concerned about any measures that may cause disruptions to the integrated North American livestock supply chains,” they said, and will “closely review” the proposed new rules.

The ministers said the federal government will also “participate in the U.S. rule-making process” to make sure the new rules adhere to Washington’s international trade obligations and won’t disrupt supply chains.

Bibeau and Ng also emphasized the Canadian government remains “firmly opposed” to any U.S. proposition that would attempt to revive a mandatory COOL system.

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, language has also been included in the 2020 Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) requiring that each party to the trade pact ensures any regulations on labeling “accord treatment no less favourable than that accorded to like goods of national origin.”

Any rules on labeling that any of the CUSMA free trade bloc members impose in the future also must “not create unnecessary obstacles to trade between the parties.”

All that said, separate legislation, which if passed would compel the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and USDA to come up with a new and WTO-compliant mandatory COOL system just for beef, has already been before Congress for months or more.

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in September 2021 by Senator John Thune of South Dakota was read twice in that chamber and referred to its agriculture, nutrition and forestry committee.

An identical bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in late March last year by Texas Rep. Lance Gooden was referred at that time to the House ag committee, and to the House committee on ways and means. The ag committee last April 18 referred the bill to a House subcommittee on livestock and foreign agriculture. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Meat lobby says U.S. voluntary label rule could spur trade action appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

But the changes are unlikely to happen unless governments act to spur them along, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released on Monday found.

“We are in the early stages of climate and agriculture policy development, but we need to start with acknowledging the urgency of the challenge,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “The IPCC warns that governments thus far have not been up to the task.”

About 22 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions came from agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors in 2019, the report said, around half of which were from deforestation. Much of the rest came from the combustion of fossil fuels.

Mitigation measures in those sectors — including protecting forests from clearcutting, sequestering carbon in agricultural soils, and more sustainable diets — can provide as much as 20-30 per cent of the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 C above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists say that is the threshold at which climate change risks spinning out of control.

“Indigenous peoples, private forest owners, local farmers and communities manage a significant share of global forests and agricultural land and play a central role in land-based mitigation options,” the report said.

While the changes required in the agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors — dubbed AFOLU by climate specialists — would not cost much to implement, there is little momentum so far to trigger them, the report said.

A lack of institutional and financial support, uncertainty over long-term tradeoffs of how land is managed, and the dispersed nature of private land holdings have hindered implementation so far, it said.

“Land provides us with so much, for example, food, nature, and our livelihoods,” said Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, vice-chair of the IPCC working group that authored the report. “These competing demands have to be carefully managed.”

One major obstacle is that dictating diet is divisive.

The IPCC panel’s initial report summary included a recommendation that consumers shift to plant-based diets and reduce their intake of meat, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

But the final version of the summary included a recommendation instead for balanced diets that include sustainably produced animal products alongside plants like grains and legumes.

Asked about the changes, Joanna House, an expert on land use at the University of Bristol and an author of the report, said she could not comment on why the changes were made but said the issue of dietary changes is complex.

“If meat is produced sustainably, it can be low-carbon and support soil carbon and nutrients,” she said. “If produced unsustainably, particularly in intense systems requiring large amounts of animal feed that result in deforestation, it can cause large net emissions.”

Global demand for livestock products is growing, a headwind to cutting agriculture’s emissions, the report said.

— Leah Douglas reports on the U.S. energy and agriculture sectors for Reuters from Washington; additional reporting by Gloria Dickie.

The post Food, farming, forestry must be transformed to curb global warming, UN says appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The initiative comes amid rising concerns that a handful of big beef, pork and poultry companies have too much control over the U.S. meat market, allowing them to dictate wholesale and retail pricing to profit at the expense of their suppliers and customers.

“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation,” Biden said. “That’s what we’re seeing in meat and poultry industries now.”

A recent White House analysis found that the top four meatpacker companies — Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS and National Beef Packing Co. — control between 55 and 85 per cent of the market in the hog, cattle, and chicken sectors.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will spend the US$1 billion from American Rescue Plan funds to expand the independent meat processing sector, including funds for financing grants, guaranteed loans, and worker training, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was speaking at an event with Biden.

USDA will also propose rules this year to strengthen enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act and to clarify the meaning of “Product of USA” meat labels, which domestic ranchers have said unfairly advantage multinational companies that raise cattle abroad and only slaughter in the United States.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, also speaking at the event, said “too many industries have become too consolidated over time,” and that the antitrust division of the Department of Justice has been chronically underfunded.

The Biden administration issued an executive order last year that advocated a whole-of-government approach to antitrust issues.

A central concern in agriculture has been meat prices, which have risen at a time when the White House is fighting inflation. An analysis in December by the White House economic council found a 120 per cent jump in the gross profits of four top meatpackers since the pandemic began.

The meat industry has said the White House analysis was inaccurate and criticized the new plan.

National Chicken Council president Mike Brown called the plan “a solution in search of a problem.”

North American Meat Institute spokesperson Sarah Little said staffing plants remains the biggest issue for meatpackers and that the White House plan would not address it.

“Our members of all sizes cannot operate at capacity because they struggle to employ a long-term stable workforce,” she said. “New capacity and expanded capacity created by the government will have the same problem.”

Eric Deeble, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, cheered the plan, calling it a “very positive step to ensure farmers and ranchers receive fair prices.”

The anticipated rulemaking under the Packers and Stockyards Act “could have a significant impact,” said Peter Carstensen, emeritus professor of law at University of Wisconsin-Madison and former antitrust attorney at the Department of Justice. But he noted that investment in independent processing itself would not address market concentration.

Austin Frerick, deputy director of the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University, an antitrust research centre, said the plan does not go far enough to tackle the power of the top meatpackers.

“I do not believe this (plan) will meaningfully change the concentration numbers,” he said.

— Leah Douglas reports on U.S. agriculture and energy policy for Reuters from Washington, D.C.; additional reporting by Diane Bartz and Trevor Hunnicutt.

The post Biden unveils plan to boost competition in U.S. meat industry appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Financial statements of the meat-processing companies — which control 55 to 85 per cent of the market for beef, poultry and pork — contradict claims that rising meat prices were caused by higher labour or transportation costs, advisers led by National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote in an analysis published on the White House website Friday.

Officials studied earnings statements from Tyson Foods, the chicken producer and biggest U.S. meat company by sales; Brazil-based JBS, the world’s biggest meatpacker; Brazilian beef producer Marfrig Global Foods, which owns most of National Beef Packing Co.; and Seaboard Corp.

Those statements showed a 120 per cent collective jump in their gross profits since the pandemic and a 500 per cent increase in net income, the analysis shows. These companies recently announced $1 billion in new dividends and stock buybacks, on top of the more than $3 billion they paid to shareholders since the pandemic began (all figures US$).

Trade group the North American Meat Institute accused the White House of “cherry-picking” data.

“It is no coincidence this blog post appears on the same day as the Consumer Price Index is released showing gas and energy prices are up nearly 60 per cent over the past 12 months which is nearly 10 times the rate of inflation for food,” president Julie Anna Potts said in a statement.

Profit margins — the spread companies are making over and above their costs — have increased significantly too, belying the argument that companies are just passing along higher labour and supply costs, the analysis said, with gross margins up 50 per cent and net margins up over 300 per cent.

“If rising input costs were driving rising meat prices, those profit margins would be roughly flat, because higher prices would be offset by the higher costs,” the analysis said.

Increases in meat prices accounted for 25 per cent of the rise in consumer prices for food consumed at home in November, a big driver in the surge in inflation seen in recent months.

Tyson increased the price of beef “so much — by more than 35 per cent — that they made record profits while actually selling less beef than before,” the advisers wrote.

The companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The White House, hammered by Republicans over rising inflation, is scrambling to combat rising prices by clearing supply chain logjams and tackling what it views as uncompetitive practices by big companies, which are reporting big profit gains even as consumers suffer.

Friday’s blog — released after November consumer prices showed the largest annual gain since 1982 — reflects growing frustration by White House officials about continued increases in meat prices, an issue it flagged in September.

— Andrea Shalal reports on U.S. trade and economic policy for Reuters from Washington, D.C.

The post U.S. packer profit margins jumped 300 per cent during pandemic, economists say appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) on Friday published a new final rule updating regulations for imports of sheep, goats, their meat and related products.

The new rule, set to take effect Jan. 3, 2022, “aligns the regulations with the current scientific understanding of BSE,” APHIS said.

When APHIS originally set up BSE-related import restrictions, “the potential risk of species other than cattle, including sheep and goats, was unknown,” the agency said.

The U.S. rules in place today prohibit imports of most live sheep and goats, and most sheep and goat products, from any countries considered a risk for BSE.

Since then, though, “scientists have learned much more about how BSE works, and their extensive research shows that sheep and goats pose a minimal risk of spreading BSE.”

U.S. regulations in place today limit imports from Canada to include just slaughter or feeder sheep under 12 months old and “certain products” from sheep and goats, as well as sheep and goat semen. They also restrict imports of meat and edible products other than gelatin from Canadian sheep and goats.

The new rules taking effect next month for sheep and goats deal instead with scrapie — a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) that can affect those animals. Other TSEs include BSE in cattle, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people and chronic wasting disease in cervids such as elk and deer.

Under the new rules, any live sheep or goat entering the U.S. that’s not headed directly for slaughter — or for a designated feedlot followed directly by slaughter — must come from either a scrapie-free country, or from a flock with a herd certification program equivalent to the U.S. Scrapie Flock Certification Program.

According to the Canadian Sheep Breeders’ Association, importers of sheep and goats from Canada for purposes other than slaughter under the new rule will have to provide documents showing the animals have “reached and maintained certified status.”

The U.S. evaluation of Canada’s Scrapie Flock Certification Program has found that farms ranked as “Level Certified Plus” in the Canadian program will meet the new import requirement, the CSBA said in its summary of the new rule.

APHIS will issue permits for sheep of certain “classical scrapie-resistant genotypes” including female sheep of genotype AARR and male sheep of genotypes AARR and AAQR, the association said.

Imported sheep and goats also have to be permanently identified with an APHIS-approved form of country mark, but APHIS “did not specify any particular method of identification,” CSBA said.

APHIS, in its new rule, said it will require official Canadian RFID eartags for goats and sheep imported from Canada, to be specified in guidance published later on the agency’s website. CSBA, however, said those official ear tags alone won’t meet the proposed country mark requirement.

Sheep and goats coming in for purposes other than immediate slaughter will also require a “permanent mark” unless they’re to be maintained as a segregated group in a designated feedlot, APHIS said. Tattoos are “expected to meet the country mark identification requirement,” CSBA said.

Past that, APHIS said, the new rule’s proposals for slaughter and feeder sheep and goats imported from anywhere in the world “are similar to the requirements for sheep and goats imported for those purposes from Canada.

“In other words, we proposed to make the provisions, which had been Canada-specific, broadly applicable to ruminants from anywhere in the world.”

APHIS, in its supporting documents, said it doesn’t expect any “significant increase” in live sheep and goat imports due to the new rule.

In the five years between 2016 and 2020, APHIS said, annual live sheep and goat imports averaged about 12,167 head — all of which came from Canada. Imports per year in that time ranged from 7,338 head in 2018 to 21,223 in 2016.

As for the meat market, APHIS said U.S. imports of sheep and goat meat today come in as chilled or frozen lamb, and “almost entirely” from Australia and New Zealand, the only two countries the U.S. currently recognizes as “wholly free” from scrapie.

APHIS, under the new rule, projects additional imports of sheep and goat meat in a range between 1,582 and 4,747 tonnes per year, which would cut into U.S. domestic meat production by between 439 and 1,317 tonnes — but would also spur greater U.S. domestic sheep and goat meat consumption, to the tune of between 1,143 and 3,430 tonnes.

APHIS said its projections suggest “consumer welfare gains would outweigh producer welfare losses,” and U.S. sheep and goat producers could also benefit from “resulting genetic improvements” by way of imported sheep and goat germplasm. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post U.S. to lift BSE-related rules off sheep, goat imports appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.