Mexican authorities have lifted a suspension on US meat imports from 20 plants which were found to be operating in violation of import regulations, he Mexican Meat Council said yesterday.
"The good news that we have just received 15 minutes ago is that the ban has been lifted on 20 of the 36 plants that were found to be violating the regulations," Eugenio Salinas, chairman of the council, told Dow Jones Newswires."Imports from these plants have already resumed after the paperwork they had submitted were cleared earlier in the day," Salinas said.
He said the ban was lifted on all products for the 20 plants affected, including shipments already underway as well as for frozen exports from the US which had been temporarily held at the US-Mexico border.
It was not immediately known which 20 plants had been able to resume exporting to Mexico.
Salinas said the status of the remaining 16 plants would not be known in full until a report on the formal investigation is released on January 15th.
But negotiations between industry leaders and Mexican authorities over how to apply new import regulations smoothly are scheduled to start after Jan. 5th, he said, adding he expect a quick solution to the dispute.
Salinas also said U.S. fears that the decision to ban imports was taken to retaliate against new U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law, which Mexico has objected to, were ungrounded.
"This is an entirely different matter which is completely unrelated to the COOL regulation," he said.
Mexico fears that new measures demanded under the COOL labeling will hurt Mexican products, and the Economy Ministry launched a joint complaint with Canada over COOL at the World Trade Organization earlier this month.
By Maja Wallengren, Dow Jones Newswires