Audio: Efforts to Resolve Saudi Arabia Beef Impasse Continue

Saudi Arabia’s suspension of U.S. beef imports has now lingered for nearly a year and a half, and continues to have a significant impact on the bottom line of U.S exporters who served this market. The suspension came about one month after an atypical BSE case was detected in California in April 2012.

As U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) Senior Vice President for Trade Access Thad Lively explains, this BSE case had no impact on the United States’ BSE risk classification, which was controlled risk at the time but has since been upgraded to negligible risk. Very few trading partners reacted negatively to the case, but Saudi Arabia has been the notable exception.

Because Saudi Arabia represented less than 1 percent of the U.S. beef industry’s total exports, closure of this market has attracted far less media attention than some other beef trade disputes. But this industry-wide percentage greatly understates the harsh impact this closure has had on several small and middle-sized U.S. companies that cultivated a significant customer base in Saudi Arabia and are now forced to watch from the sidelines as their customers turn to other suppliers.

Lively goes on to explain that USMEF is working closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of U.S. Trade Representative to reopen Saudi Arabia to U.S. beef, and he hopes to see progress in coming weeks.

TRANSCRIPT:

JOE SCHUELE: In this U.S. Meat Export Federation report, we look at the beef trade impasse with Saudi Arabia, which has now lingered for nearly a year and a half. USMEF’s Senior Vice President, Thad Lively, has more details on why the market closed and explains that this situation continues to have a very negative impact on some U.S. companies.

THAD LIVELY: Last year when we had our fourth case of BSE here in the United States, that is the case that was in California, most countries around the world looked at that and concluded there was no reason to change anything about their import requirements for beef from the United States. Saudi Arabia was really the one big exception, they chose to close their market in response to that fourth case and the market has remained closed since then. It is actually a very important market; it is a growing market in the Middle East. It is a high value market and to a handful of companies that specialize in trading products to a fairly top-end sort of customer whether in the Middle East or other countries around the world, Saudi Arabia was a key market and was an important part of their overall business. For those companies the impact of having the market closed has been really profound.

JOE SCHUELE: Efforts to reopen Saudi Arabia are ongoing and Lively hopes to see progress in coming weeks.

THAD LIVELY: We went into D.C. in late May with a group of these companies, basically all the companies that are involved in that business and talked to both USDA and USTR. They of course share our frustration with the situation, they have engaged with the Saudi authorities on the question of how to get the market open again and it is our impression that that engagement is now being stepped up and the discussions will move this fall to the specific conditions that will apply to U.S. beef exports when Saudi Arabia does reopen the market.

JOE SCHUELE: For more on this and other trade issues please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.