The CEO of Bord Bia has said that the food board “wouldn’t envisage” a repeat of the last time Ireland lost access to the Chinese market for beef, when exports were stopped for almost three years.
In November, beef exports to China from Ireland were suspended after the discovery of an atypical case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a 10-year-old cow.
Atypical BSE is a rare spontaneous event that may occur in any bovine population. It is not related to feed contamination.
Notwithstanding that, beef exports to China were stopped as a result, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has repeatedly said that his department is working on regaining access.
The suspension of exports sparked fears that exporters would see a repeat of the period from May 2020 to January 2023, when Irish beef was locked out of China due, again, to the discovery of a case of atypical BSE, on that occasion in a 14-year-old cow.
However, Bord Bia CEO Jim O’Toole has said that there are indications that market access to China can be regained sooner than the 33 months it took the last time this happened.
Speaking to Agriland at the launch of the Bord Bia Exports Performance and Prospects Report 2023/24 today (Wednesday, January 10), O’Toole said: “What I understand is that all the indications we can get from this process are positive.
“Obviously it is within the gift of the Chinese government, but there is, my sense is, some optimism that it will be resolved early.
“How many days, weeks, or months is ‘early’ is probably hard to say, we just don’t know that. But I suppose we wouldn’t envisage the length of time it tool to resolve previously repeating itself,” O’Toole added.
Minister McConalogue, who also attended the launch of the report today, stressed the importance of a quick resolution to getting the most out of the Chinese beef market in the long term.
He said: “For the long-term health of building an export beef sector to China, it’s important that it be a short [time].
“It was a sporadic case [of BSE]. These do happen and will happen into the future in every country but we have very thorough systems here to make sure we catch them and that they’re identified.”
“You can expect every two, three, four years we’ll have a sporadic case like this, and therefore a situation where it led to long disruption in the market would mean that the long term success of the market would be very much affected,” the minister added.
Minister McConalogue said that his department is continuing to engage with the Chinese authorities on the matter.
“We have been through this process before once, since we got access to China originally. That was a long process, but that process involved going through the same process that’s there now, providing the epidemiological reports, going through those steps, and getting to the stage where [the Chinese authorities] are absolutely reassured of the systems in place,” he said.
“I’m hopeful, and we have been hopeful from the outset, that given that we’ve been through the process before, that we could repeat it in a much more concise manner,” the minister added.