USMEF Officers Meet with Korean Hanwoo Industry Reps
USMEF Officers Meet with Korean Hanwoo Industry Reps
Officers of USMEF’s Executive Committee met with representatives of South Korea’s Hanwoo beef industry today as they continued their fact-finding tour of USMEF’s Asia region.
USMEF Chairman Jon Caspers, Chair-elect Jim Peterson and Vice-chair Keith Miller were joined on the tour and a meeting with a regional Korean livestock cooperative by Michael Fay, director of the Agricultural Trade Office from the U.S. embassy in Seoul, and Yong Keun Ban, agricultural specialist from the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the U.S. embassy.
The group toured several Hanwoo beef farms, including one of the largest in the country, Okcheon Beef Farm, owned by Mr. Nam Yong Kim. While the average Hanwoo beef farm in Korea has 10 to 12 head of cattle, Mr. Kim’s farm has 400 head. Overall, Korea has an estimated 2.9 million head of Hanwoo cattle, the domestic cattle breed of the nation.
“The U.S. beef industry and Korea’s Hanwoo beef industry are not really in direct competition, so this was a good opportunity for us to meet and share information,” said Peterson, a beef producer from Buffalo, Montana. “Highly marbled Hanwoo beef, similar to Wagyu beef, is the preferred beef for Koreans, but it accounts for slightly less than half of the beef consumed here, so there is room for U.S. beef. But we face very stiff competition from Australia, which has had several years to become firmly entrenched here while the U.S. was restricted from the market after the finding of BSE.”
USMEF Chair-elect Jim Peterson with Hanwoo farmer Nam Yong Kim
In addition to head-to-head competition with Australian beef backed by a full traceability system that has strong appeal for Korean consumers, Peterson noted that the U.S. beef industry continues to face a severe backlog of frozen product in the Korean pipeline, and a group of Korean importers who have been financially damaged by a perfect storm of falling beef demand due to the economic downturn, declining value of the Korean currency and lingering anti-U.S. sentiment left over from the massive street protests in the summer of 2008.
USMEF Chairman Jon Caspers interacts with Hanwoo steer
Mr. Kim, who began raising Angus and other cattle breeds 20 years ago, noted that he changed to the Hanwoo cattle in 2000 when it became clear that Korean consumers were demonstrating a preference for the domestic breed. The switch to Hanwoo has been a profitable one for Mr. Kim, who displayed one steer for the visitors – weighing in at 650 kilograms – which he said would soon fetch $7,000 at auction.
“In the future, we may be able to work together,” said Mr. Kim to the U.S. industry representatives. While noting that there was resentment built up among Korean consumers who learned that on numerous occasions U.S. beef reportedly had been repackaged in Korea and sold as domestic Hanwoo beef, he stated that because Korea now has a country of origin labeling system with heavy fines for violations, it should eliminate the repackaging issue and clarify the separate markets for U.S. and Korean beef.
Having visited beef operations in both the United States and Australia, Mr. Kim acknowledged that U.S. beef is more in keeping with the tastes of Korean consumers. After visiting one U.S. beef plant, he commented that he felt “they were producing beef to export to Korean consumers,” adding “personally, I believe U.S. beef is safe.”
USMEF’s executive committee members, accompanied by President and CEO Philip Seng, Senior Vice President Asia-Pacific Joel Haggard and Director of Export Services Kevin Smith, will meet with U.S. Embassy officials in Seoul tomorrow for a briefing on changes in that key export market for U.S. beef and pork before continuing on to Japan as USMEF continues to assess the impact of the recent Japanese elections.
# # #
The U.S. Meat Export Federation (www.USMEF.org) is the trade association responsible for developing international markets for the U.S. red meat industry and is funded by USDA, exporting companies, and the beef, pork, corn and soybean checkoff programs.
For more information, contact Jim Herlihy at jherlihy@usmef.org.
USMEF complies with all equal opportunity, non-discrimination and affirmative action measures applicable to it by contract, government rule or regulation or as otherwise provided by law.
USMEF Officers Meet with Korean Hanwoo Industry Reps
Officers of USMEF’s Executive Committee met with representatives of South Korea’s Hanwoo beef industry today as they continued their fact-finding tour of USMEF’s Asia region.
USMEF Chairman Jon Caspers, Chair-elect Jim Peterson and Vice-chair Keith Miller were joined on the tour and a meeting with a regional Korean livestock cooperative by Michael Fay, director of the Agricultural Trade Office from the U.S. embassy in Seoul, and Yong Keun Ban, agricultural specialist from the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the U.S. embassy.
The group toured several Hanwoo beef farms, including one of the largest in the country, Okcheon Beef Farm, owned by Mr. Nam Yong Kim. While the average Hanwoo beef farm in Korea has 10 to 12 head of cattle, Mr. Kim’s farm has 400 head. Overall, Korea has an estimated 2.9 million head of Hanwoo cattle, the domestic cattle breed of the nation.
“The U.S. beef industry and Korea’s Hanwoo beef industry are not really in direct competition, so this was a good opportunity for us to meet and share information,” said Peterson, a beef producer from Buffalo, Montana. “Highly marbled Hanwoo beef, similar to Wagyu beef, is the preferred beef for Koreans, but it accounts for slightly less than half of the beef consumed here, so there is room for U.S. beef. But we face very stiff competition from Australia, which has had several years to become firmly entrenched here while the U.S. was restricted from the market after the finding of BSE.”
USMEF Chair-elect Jim Peterson with Hanwoo farmer Nam Yong Kim
In addition to head-to-head competition with Australian beef backed by a full traceability system that has strong appeal for Korean consumers, Peterson noted that the U.S. beef industry continues to face a severe backlog of frozen product in the Korean pipeline, and a group of Korean importers who have been financially damaged by a perfect storm of falling beef demand due to the economic downturn, declining value of the Korean currency and lingering anti-U.S. sentiment left over from the massive street protests in the summer of 2008.
USMEF Chairman Jon Caspers interacts with Hanwoo steer
Mr. Kim, who began raising Angus and other cattle breeds 20 years ago, noted that he changed to the Hanwoo cattle in 2000 when it became clear that Korean consumers were demonstrating a preference for the domestic breed. The switch to Hanwoo has been a profitable one for Mr. Kim, who displayed one steer for the visitors – weighing in at 650 kilograms – which he said would soon fetch $7,000 at auction.
“In the future, we may be able to work together,” said Mr. Kim to the U.S. industry representatives. While noting that there was resentment built up among Korean consumers who learned that on numerous occasions U.S. beef reportedly had been repackaged in Korea and sold as domestic Hanwoo beef, he stated that because Korea now has a country of origin labeling system with heavy fines for violations, it should eliminate the repackaging issue and clarify the separate markets for U.S. and Korean beef.
Having visited beef operations in both the United States and Australia, Mr. Kim acknowledged that U.S. beef is more in keeping with the tastes of Korean consumers. After visiting one U.S. beef plant, he commented that he felt “they were producing beef to export to Korean consumers,” adding “personally, I believe U.S. beef is safe.”
USMEF’s executive committee members, accompanied by President and CEO Philip Seng, Senior Vice President Asia-Pacific Joel Haggard and Director of Export Services Kevin Smith, will meet with U.S. Embassy officials in Seoul tomorrow for a briefing on changes in that key export market for U.S. beef and pork before continuing on to Japan as USMEF continues to assess the impact of the recent Japanese elections.
# # #
The U.S. Meat Export Federation (www.USMEF.org) is the trade association responsible for developing international markets for the U.S. red meat industry and is funded by USDA, exporting companies, and the beef, pork, corn and soybean checkoff programs.
For more information, contact Jim Herlihy at jherlihy@usmef.org.
USMEF complies with all equal opportunity, non-discrimination and affirmative action measures applicable to it by contract, government rule or regulation or as otherwise provided by law.