MEXICAN meat imports from 20 US plants resumed in full yesterday, but despite most problems over the trade dispute being resolved, a number of challenges remain ahead for the Mexico-US meat trade.
Eugenio Salinas, chairman of the Mexican Meat Council, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview that new packaging regulations implemented by Mexico earlier this year had been at the root of the suspension of the imports.He said Mexico used to accept bulk meat shipments in cargoes of up to 1 metric tonne, but recently changed that to 50 kilograms, and many US plants have yet to correct it, leading to the main violation behind the import ban.
"Up until a few months ago the US plants could still ship in bulk up to 1 tonne per shipment, but this has been changed to 50kg and we are concerned that these new regulations will be a source of continuing problems," Salinas said.
He said routine inspections of the 36 U.S. meat plants in question about two months ago had led to the discovery of the violation, mostly because of the bulk restrictions, but also because of paperwork irregularities, and in some isolated cases there had been sanitary violations.
"The worst part of this problem is that most of these plants already had submitted the paperwork showing they had corrected this to the US Department of Agriculture but it was the USDA that had failed to forward the documentation to the Mexican authorities," Salinas said. Exports were in the end banned from 30 of the 36 plants inspected, according to the USDA.
He said the 20 plants that have been cleared Monday and had resumed exports to Mexico were the plants that already had corrected the violations and submitted documentation to the USDA.
Five more plants were cleared yesterday, while two more plants were in the process of being cleared, trade sources said in Washington.
Salinas said although the dispute led to interruptions of meat imports for less than a week, the impact would have been serious if it had not been resolved for most of the affected plants so quickly.
"To the industry, and we represent mostly meat processors and importers, this is one of the most important periods of the year with the holiday season, so the impact would have been really serious if it had not been resolved before New Year," said Salinas.
Salinas said the new regulations, which Mexico imposed in a bid to improve sanitary regulations and make food safety inspections easier, were complicating the bilateral trade and the Mexican Meat Council was scheduled to start talks with Mexican authorities about this on January 5.
"The bulk shipments have come in packages of up to 1 ton and we understand that it really makes it difficult for the authorities to undertake the inspections in cargoes this large, especially since it's all shipped frozen.
"But there has to be a system that can work better for both parts, because if all the imports have to be repacked to 50kg only, it will add 12-15 per cent to the cost for the export process alone," he said.
He said meat industry representatives are expecting to hold a series of talks with the Mexican agriculture and sanitation authorities during the first week of 2009, where they hope they will be able to find a compromise.
Salinas and other industry officials also repeated that the decision to ban imports from the meat plants in the first place had "absolutely nothing to do" with the new US country-of-origin labeling law, which Mexico has objected to. Traders and analysts in the U.S. said the ban could have been in retaliation to the COOL regulation.
The Mexican government earlier this month joined Canada at the World Trade Organization in seeking consultations with the US over the new COOL law for agricultural and livestock products, which Mexico thinks could hurt its livestock exports and could be in violation of WTO rules.
According to Mexican Agriculture Ministry data, Mexico exported 360,000 head of cattle to the US in the first 10 months of this year. In all of 2007, live cattle exports were just over 873,000 head.
-By Maja Wallengren, Dow Jones Newswires