Multi-million dollar exports of chilled and frozen beef and sheep meat to China still remain in limbo, a week after Chinese authorities slapped bans in six processing plants in Australia.

Temporary suspensions were made on exports from JBS’s Toowoomba and Scone plants, Thomas Food International’s facility at Murray Bridge in South Australia and Northern Co-operative Meat Company’s Casino processor, as well as plants run by Kilcoy Pastoral and Australian Country Choice in Queensland.

The Australian Meat Industry Council said the bans related to “labelling and trade description” of meat products.

AMIC chief executive officer Pat Hutchinson said China took product labelling issues very seriously as part of its food security.

“There are times when there are labelling issues, whether machine or human (error) or both,” he said. “China has said these occurrences have not met its satisfaction.”

AMIC said China was an important meat export market for Australia, shipping 160,000 tonnes of beef and sheep meat valued at about $970 million in 2015-16.

The suspensions related only to meat products loaded on ships from July 24.

Mr Hutchinson said it was not known how many tonnes of product shipped after this time were affected but it was most likely “small amounts”.

He said processors would have to find new buyers for product no longer going to China until the labelling issue was resolved.

Trade Minister Steve Ciobo said it was “a very significant situation” and the Government had “mobilised quickly” to engage Chinese authorities on the issue.

“We have tens of millions (of dollars) in trade affected — it could even be more than $100 million,” Mr Ciobo said.

One meat processor said the issue centred on “equivalence”, a clause in a trade agreement which allowed countries to agree their different technical regulations will achieve the same outcomes, to eliminate dubious trade barriers. The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement came into force in December 2015.

The processor claimed ChAFTA did not have an equivalence clause, complicating resolution of the issue.

“It is a minor hiccup ... if this happened in the US, the issue would be able to be corrected with the exporter without any trading halts,” the processor said.

Source: The Weekly Times. Date: 2017-08-02