Canada’s red meat sector is concerned about the potential for the UK’s entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership [CPATPP].
This move came after Canada’s minister of trade, Mary Ng, announced an agreement to grant the United Kingdom accession, a significant disappointment and frustration for the Canadian Meat Council [CMC], the Canadian Cattle Association [CCA], and the Canadian Pork Council [CPC], the national coalition of export-focused agriculture commodity organizations.
The CCA and CPC represent the producers, while the Meat Council represents the processors like Maple Leaf, HyLife, JBS, and Cargill, companies that sell beef and pork overseas.
Chris White, president and CEO of the Canadian Meat Council, said the main concern is the failure to accept Canada’s meat inspection system, which limits Canadian access to the UK market.
“We know that our food system is world-class, and when we travel overseas, presenting our companies looking for increased market access and whatever the market, one of the critical things in our favour is our system is World Class science supported through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency,” said White.
The UK needs to recognize this food safety and health system and wants no product with hormones coming into their country. There’s a significant trade imbalance, with a limited amount of Canadian beef going out to the UK and much more UK beef coming into Canada.
Because the UK won’t recognize the Canadian system, it makes it difficult for Canadian companies to get Canadian beef into that market.
“It’s a way of keeping that inequity in place, and we don’t see a way around it. It means lots of beef and pork coming into Canada from the UK and very little going into the UK. It’s a very inequitable dynamic, and it’s one that we don’t support,” said the CMC CEO.
While bad enough dealing with the US on the matter broadly speaking, it includes the European Union because of where the UK is geographically situated, which is their key market.
The UK was the first country to join the CPTPP after its initial ratification. The Canadian government is a signatory to this means Canada is not insisting that they view the Canadian meat system as equivalent to theirs. That means that every other country that will now subsequently join post-UK will look at whatever the terms the UK got to join. If the UK didn’t have to recognize the Canadian meat system on an equivalency basis, other countries wouldn’t have to either.
“This means from our perspective that every other country that joins will have the same push back to Canadian industry that we now get with the UK,” said White.
Canadian meat exporters will have those trade imbalances for foreign products coming in, but limited Canadian products going out because the product has hormones.
The CMC kept telling the Canadian government and officials throughout the last few months that if the government lets the UK in, that’s fine.
“But if you can’t get equivalency and if you can’t get a situation where we have equal access to their market, then just take Canadian beef and pork out of the equation. And they didn’t do that,” White said.
As the government suggested, negotiating good quotas on both products is entirely disingenuous to suggest that’s a win for Canadian beef and pork producers because impossible to access. One hundred per cent of zero is still zero.
“Look what we’ve accomplished for you. But if we can’t take advantage of it, then it’s of no use to us. And that’s the situation we’re in right now.”
White believes the government is looking at the bigger picture and, from an overall perspective, thinks it’s a good thing, but removing certain commodities from the trade deal makes it look less attractive.
“There is already a trade imbalance, and from our experience, that trade imbalance will only get worse. It has no appeal to us; it will be problematic and give our companies fewer opportunities. It’s counter-intuitive why you would expect us to support that,” said White.
It’s unusual for the three groups to take a position like this. But the Canadian beef and pork producers need these trade deals and market access, as do most other farm commodity groups because they produce more products than Canadians will consume.
“It is a powerful signal to the Canadian government just how fundamentally opposed we are because the negative effects will go far beyond the initial UK entry into the CPATPP and could seriously damage the Canadian meat industry from our perspective. We think this is bad for Canadian farmers.” •
— By Harry Siemens