U.S. beef gaining on Australian imports in South Korea
By Tom Johnston on 4/29/2010
South Korea’s imports of U.S. beef are gaining on Australian beef imports, which enjoyed the absence of that competition in recent years due to Seoul’s intermittent bans on U.S. beef.
According to a local report by Yonhap News quoting domestic meat industry sources, first-quarter data showed U.S. beef’s share of total imports increased to 31.7 percent from 24.8 percent in the year-ago period, while Australian beef imports were 50.6 percent.
Total imports were 60,724 metric tons, the report said.
While Australia maintained its position as top supplier, U.S. beef grew at a much faster pace, up 56.5 percent to 19,230 metric tons. Australia grew 5.6 percent to 30,706 metric tons.
The meat industry sources said that as the import price of U.S. beef rose, the domestic sale price of U.S. beef also gained 15 percent to 20 percent in the January-March period as compared to last year.
South Korea barred U.S. beef in 2003 after the discovery of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the state of Washington. Seoul resumed imports in October 2006, but again suspended them after banned backbones were found in a shipment in October 2007.
Local beef importers restarted shipments of U.S. beef four months after Seoul and Washington signed a new import deal in April 2008. U.S. beef sales resumed in South Korea in November 2008.
Walmart to demand new beef safety protocols of suppliers
By Rita Jane Gabbett on 4/29/2010
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced today that it will require additional beef safety measures from its beef suppliers, including validating their food safety measures through specialized testing.
The new process controls standards and goals are additions to a food safety program that already requires ground beef suppliers to test for E.coli O157:H7 and achieve prevention-based certification against one of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) internationally recognized standards.
“At Walmart and Sam’s Club, our commitment to providing our customers with safe, quality foods is unparalleled,” said Vice President for Food Safety Frank Yiannas in a news release. “As part of our continuous improvement efforts, we go further than many U.S. retailers in requiring leading-edge food safety standards throughout the entire food production chain.”
“In light of recent beef recalls, we determined it was prudent to require an additional layer of protection for our customers,” he said.
The new program requires Walmart and Sam’s Club beef suppliers to implement controls that would significantly reduce potential contamination levels and validate that the measures they’ve implemented are effective through specialized testing.
Suppliers who do not operate slaughterhouses must be in compliance with the new standard by June 2011. For beef slaughterhouse suppliers, there is a two-step approach with the first step to be completed by June 2011 and the second by June 2012.
Walmart and Sam’s Club will work closely with beef suppliers to ensure that the new requirement is implemented without additional cost to customers.
The protocol has been reviewed with numerous stakeholders including consumer groups, regulators, academicians, beef suppliers, and industry associations.
James Marsden of Kansas State University stated, “Walmart has taken steps to provide its customers with the safest possible beef products. Consumers across the United States will benefit greatly from this timely food safety initiative.”
Jim Dickson, Iowa State University Professor of Animal Science, added, “Walmart is taking a progressive approach to assuring the safety of the foods they sell. This is a win for the consumers, the beef industry in general, and Walmart. The lessons learned from Walmart’s approach will be applicable to ground beef sold everywhere.”
Cutting to the Chase
By: Raoul Baxter
Reflections on the fall of communism
(The views and opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the author.)
One of the great events in many of our lives was seeing the Berlin wall come down around 1989. I personally had no clue the Russian and East European economies were collapsing. If you had told me that morning the collapse of communism was coming I would have bet you a million dollars it was not.
If all you needed for a country to be successful was an abundance of natural resources, these countries would have been O.K. However, you have to have a good system to make them work. The communists had absolutely no clue as to why manufacturing plants existed. They built throughout Russia and Eastern Europe some of the biggest plants I have ever seen in the world. They had a car plant in the Ukraine which could have made every car all of Europe needed. The fact none of them worked was beside the point.
I went to a number of state farms in Russia at the time of the collapse. As you would drive to the headquarters you would see huge numbers of tractors sitting in the fields rusting. The plants would send the farms tractors and harvesting equipment whether they wanted them or not. Only about two out of 10 pieces of equipment worked. The workers just used most of them to rob parts.
Basically these were very intelligent people that were strangled by the system. Initially I thought it would take two generations of Russians and at least one for the East Europeans to embrace capitalism. I was way off base. The jump from communism to capitalism is much greater than I would have imagined. However, the jump from communism to socialism is not such a big jump.
These countries were in chaos and, looking back, it is amazing there were not some revolts. However, the EU rolled out its new member campaign and countries from Romania to Poland became part of the EU. Western European countries thought they were going to be able to capture the advantages of Eastern Europe. More important, they did not want the agricultural potential of these Eastern European countries to knock their own status quo. For Americans buying agriculture or manufacturing facilities in east Europe the constant interference of the EU was the greatest problem. Now they are a whole new European Union — an amazing feat.
Now Europe is directly bordering Russia and the new NATO is made up of many former Soviet puppets. You can imagine the tensions which exist on those borders. Still, years later agriculture has not become the economic weapon I thought it would be.
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