UK manufacturing beef to be exported to Canada
Manufacturing beef from the UK has gained approval to be exported to the Canadian market, following ongoing negotiations for a numbers of years.
An initial agreement had been reached in 2015, on the back of work involving the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), Defra, the Food Standards Agency, UK Export Certification Partnership, Quality Meat Scotland and HCC Meat Promotion Wales.
It covered both primal cuts and manufacturing beef, but, since then, UK officials have been working to ensure manufacturing beef could be tested to the required microbiological standards required by the Canadian authorities.
This regime is now in place and has been evaluated to UKAS standards, allowing shipments to begin immediately.
Dr Phil Hadley.
Dr Phil Hadley, AHDB international market development director, commented: “This is fantastic news and comes after a lot of hard work by all parties involved.
“We already have market access for sheepmeat into Canada and beef primals have been going over since 2015. To have reached a stage where we have all the testing in place to satisfy inspectors with regards to E.coli is brilliant.
“This is a great opportunity for processors and producers in the UK and is another outlet for our product, which in turn helps underpin farmgate prices.”
In 2016, Canada imported 147,000 tonnes of fresh and frozen beef. Of this, 55% came from the US, while the UK sent 412 tonnes of primal cuts.
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