Saudi Arabia lifted its four-year-old ban on U.S. beef, reopening a promising export market that was closed to the American livestock industry following discovery of the fourth U.S. case of mad cow disease. “Re-opening Saudi Arabia’s market will create additional export opportunities for American ranchers,” said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.
Initially, U.S. imports will be restricted to beef from cattle less than 30 months old, later expanding to include beef from animals less than 48 months old. Products eligible for import will include bone-in and deboned offal, ground beef and processed beef. USDA will set up an export verification system in coming weeks to assure that shipments meet Saudi Arabia’s terms.
When trade resumes, U.S. exporters will have to contend with Australia and Canada, which filled the void in the Saudi beef market after the ban. Australia’s beef exports to Saudi Arabia rose to 31,316 tonnes in 2013, up nearly six-fold from 2012, according to Food Navigator. Saudi demand for meat has grown rapidly in the last 20 years.
Mad cow disease, formally named bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a brain-wasting disease of older cattle. U.S. officials say the 2012 case, in dairy cow in California, was “atypical,” meaning BSE occurred spontaneously rather than through consumption of infected feed. Only the initial U.S. case, in December 2003, was in an animal under 10 years of age. The Holstein dairy cow in Washington state was six-and-a-half years old and was imported from Canada in 2001.
U.S. beef sales to Saudi Arabia totaled 6,628 tonnes, worth $31.5 million, in 2011 before the ban, up 40 percent from the previous year, said the U.S. Meat Export Federation.