Singapore has approved the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s certificate for exports of all Canadian beef, including beef offal, with no restrictions on the age of the cattle from which the beef was harvested.

Singapore’s decision, effective Friday (Aug. 20), makes it the first to remove BSE-related trade restrictions on beef that were held over from Canada’s previous “controlled risk” status.

Singapore had until now approved all Canadian boneless beef and bone-in beef from animals under 30 months of age (UTMs).

That said, Singapore hasn’t bought any Canadian beef since 2019, in which it took 1.79 tonnes, worth $31,000. Its biggest year for BSE-era beef imports from Canada was in 2014, when it took 53.77 tonnes, worth $586,000.

“While Singapore is not currently a large market for Canadian beef, (the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association) is pleased with the market access progress as diverse market access leads to trade resiliency and the highest overall value for Canadian farmers and ranchers,” CCA president Bob Lowe said in a release Tuesday announcing Singapore’s decision.

“We are encouraged by Singapore’s change and hope others will follow soon.”

Delegates to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) formally recognized Canada’s “negligible risk” status in late May, putting it on the same footing as beef-producing and -exporting nations such as the U.S., Australia, Argentina, Brazil, India, New Zealand, Mexico and Ireland.

The discovery of Canada’s first case of BSE in domestic cattle in May 2003 led many countries to halt and/or restrict imports of Canadian beef — decisions which are estimated to have led to losses of up to $5.5 billion for Canada’s beef cattle sector in the years 2003 to 2006 alone.

Canada achieved “controlled risk” status for BSE in 2007. To get to negligible-risk status, a country must show its last case of “classical” BSE was born more than 11 years ago and effective control measures and surveillance systems are in place.

The last of Canada’s 19 domestic BSE cases, discovered in 2015, was in a cow born in 2009.

A progressive, fatal disease of the nervous system in cattle, crudely called “mad cow disease,” BSE is in the family of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) such as scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people.

No treatment or vaccine against BSE is yet available, and no method yet exists to confirm the BSE agent’s presence in live animals.

From a public health perspective, the deaths of about 230 people worldwide from a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) are believed to be connected to consumption of contaminated beef from BSE-infected cattle.

According to Health Canada, no cases of vCJD have ever been linked to eating Canadian beef and BSE in Canada poses an “extremely low” risk to human health.

Most of Canada’s major beef export markets already approved all Canadian beef, based on their previous recognition of controlled-risk status.

However, the CCA said Tuesday, “several” key trading partners including China, Taiwan and South Korea haven’t yet done so.

Most of the remaining import bans are on Canada’s bone-in beef, offal and/or beef from animals over 30 months of age (OTMs), which are believed to be the highest-risk age group for development of BSE.

China, Russia and Peru, for examples, still accept Canadian bone-in beef only from UTMs, and boneless beef from OTMs. South Korea, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Egypt accept Canadian beef but only from UTMs. Indonesia accepts Canadian boneless beef from both UTMs and OTMs. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) on Thursday announced it has delivered “negligible risk” status for BSE to both Canada and Ireland.

Canada, which has had “controlled risk” status for BSE since 2007, had applied to the OIE last July for the upgrade.

The OIE’s Scientific Commission for Animal Diseases in March this year ruled Canada fulfilled the requirements for negligible risk, and the World Assembly of OIE Delegates announced its vote of approval Thursday.

Thursday’s decision marks “a historic closing of the BSE era for Canada which brought unprecedented hardship to our industry in the early 2000s,” Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) president Bob Lowe said in a release.

Many countries halted and/or restricted their imports of Canadian beef after Canada’s first case of BSE in domestic cattle was discovered in May 2003 — a “significant impact,” the CCA noted, as about half of Canada’s beef production goes to exports.

“Although difficult to fully quantify the direct economic impacts of BSE, between just 2003 and 2006, losses were estimated to be between $4.9 (billion and) $5.5 billion,” the CCA said. Since then, the beef sector has faced “opportunity costs of continued limited market access and additional processing costs.”

Between 2006 and 2011, the CCA said, 26,000 beef producers left the industry and over 2.22 million acres of pasture were converted to other uses.

The change in status from controlled-risk to negligible-risk “will help facilitate expanded access to foreign markets for various beef products currently limited by BSE era restrictions,” the association said.

Specifically, it “enhances (Canada’s) negotiation position in efforts to gain access to additional export markets for Canadian cattle, beef and beef products among countries that require products to originate from countries with negligible BSE risk status,” the federal government said Thursday in a separate release, noting it will inform those countries of the upgrade.

As of mid-March, remaining BSE-related export restrictions in some countries include a few all-out bans on Canadian beef — such as in Australia, Brazil, Malaysia, Bolivia and Uruguay.

Others, meanwhile, maintain import bans on Canada’s bone-in beef, offal and/or beef from animals over 30 months of age (OTMs), which are believed to be the highest-risk age group for development of BSE.

China, Russia and Peru, for examples, still accept Canadian bone-in beef only from cattle under 30 months (UTMs) and boneless beef from OTMs. Others such as South Korea, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Egypt accept Canadian beef but only from UTMs. Indonesia accepts Canadian boneless beef from both UTMs and OTMs.

‘Continued observance’

Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Thursday hailed the decision as “confirm(ing) that Canada’s beef production system is sound, safe and respected.”

The upgrade puts Canada on the same BSE risk level as many major beef-producing and -exporting nations including Australia, Argentina, Brazil, India, New Zealand, Mexico and, since 2013, the United States.

For negligible-risk status, a country must show its last case of “classical” BSE was born more than 11 years ago and effective control measures and surveillance systems are in place. Canada’s last BSE case, discovered in 2015, was in a cow born in 2009.

BSE in infected cattle concentrates in nervous system tissues classified as specified risk materials (SRMs), which are removed from all Canadian cattle slaughtered for human consumption. SRMs include the skull, brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord and nerve ganglia attached to the brain and spinal cord, plus the distal ileum portion of the small intestine.

To limit the disease’s spread among cattle, the federal government banned most proteins, including SRMs, from cattle feed in 1997, and since 2007 has banned SRMs from all feeds, pet foods and fertilizers.

The OIE requires negligible-risk-level countries to show evidence of an “effective” ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding for at least eight years and “negligible risk with regard to the BSE agent for at least seven years.”

As with controlled-risk countries, negligible-risk countries must also show “intensive” active surveillance for BSE over at least a seven-year period, and maintained over time, the OIE says.

BSE risk status, according to the OIE, only applies in relation to “classical” BSE, which is transmitted through infected feed sources, rather than “atypical” BSE, forms of which are believed to occur spontaneously in cattle populations at a very low rate. All but one of the cases seen in the U.S., for example, were deemed to be “atypical” BSE.

Maintaining OIE status for BSE “is dependent on the continued observance of OIE standards,” the federal government cautioned Thursday. “Failure to comply provides ground for the OIE to revoke the given status.”

‘Great day’

For its part, the CCA said Thursday it will now focus on getting remaining BSE-era market access restrictions removed, and on the “alignment of packing house requirements with international recommendations.”

“We thank everyone involved in helping us attain this status including the government of Canada, veterinarians across Canada and Canadian farmers and ranchers,” Lowe said. “We also thank Canadian consumers who supported Canada’s beef industry during the hardest times of BSE when Canadian beef couldn’t be exported.”

“This is a great day for beef producers across the country, many of whom remember the devastation caused by BSE when it first emerged in Canada over 15 years ago,” federal Trade Minister Mary Ng said Thursday. “With this recognition, Canada is positioned to negotiate greater access to international export markets for our top-quality beef products.”

Most of Canada’s major beef export markets have already approved all Canadian beef based on their recognition of controlled-risk status, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency noted Thursday.

Those include the U.S., which took in $2.5 billion worth of Canadian beef in 2020, along with Japan ($305 million), Hong Kong ($109 million), Mexico ($106 million), Vietnam ($41 million), the Philippines ($5.1 million) and the United Arab Emirates ($3.8 million).

Earlier this month, Canada reached an agreement granting beef export access to Oman. Full market access for Canadian beef was also restored this month in Kuwait following a similar agreement reached in mid-March, ending a BSE-related ban in that country.

Guatemala last month also confirmed approval for all Canadian beef, where previously its Canadian imports were limited to boneless UTM beef.

“On the negative side of the market access balance sheet, Qatar has reduced Canada’s previous full beef access to boneless UTM beef only,” the CCA noted in a statement last month.

Canada between 2003 and 2015 confirmed 19 cases of BSE in domestic cattle. A progressive, fatal disease of the nervous system in cattle, crudely called “mad cow disease,” BSE is in the family of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) such as scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people.

No treatment or vaccine against BSE is yet available, and no method yet exists to confirm the BSE agent’s presence in live animals.

From a public health perspective, the deaths of about 230 people worldwide from a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) are believed to be connected to consumption of contaminated beef from BSE-infected cattle.

According to Health Canada, no cases of vCJD have ever been linked to eating Canadian beef and BSE in Canada poses an “extremely low” risk to human health.

Among other decisions announced Thursday, OIE delegates also voted to deem Italy and Paraguay free of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), three zones of Brazil free of foot and mouth disease (FMD), and two zones of Russia and one zone of Colombia FMD-free where vaccination is practised. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Citing industry estimates, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada said the added access announced Tuesday could mean an increase of up to 20 per cent in Canada’s beef exports to Japan, which took in $215 million worth of Canadian beef in 2018.

Japan had closed its ports entirely to Canadian beef in 2003, upon Canada’s first finding of a domestic cow with BSE. It reopened to imports of Canadian beef from cattle 20 months of age or younger in 2005, and to beef from cattle 30 months or younger (UTMs) in 2013.

The Japanese government’s latest decision comes about seven weeks after its tariffs on Canadian beef imports were lowered on April 1 to 26.6 per cent, as per the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) implemented at the end of 2018.

On implementation, CPTPP cut Japan’s beef tariff of 38.5 per cent to 27.5 per cent on Canadian fresh beef and to 26.9 per cent on frozen beef. Tariffs were also reduced for “a range of offal products,” the CCA noted.

Those tariffs, the federal government noted Tuesday, are to be further reduced to nine per cent over 14 years.

“We were pleased to see the access to Japan attained under CPTPP and are happy to see the market potential grow with new access for OTM,” David Haywood-Farmer, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said Tuesday in a release.

The CPTPP’s tariff cuts have already paid dividends for Canadian beef exporters, the CCA said, citing Statistics Canada data for the first quarter of calendar 2019, showing beef export volume up 100.2 per cent to 9,826 tonnes and up 117.4 per cent in value to $68.7 million compared with the year-earlier period.

Under CPTPP, the CCA noted previously, Japanese importers are also no longer held back by concerns over triggering a safeguard which would have caused the beef tariff to jump to 50 per cent.

With that and other factors such as the “ups and downs” of seasonality, the CCA said last month it expects at least a year to pass before a “clear trend” can be established in Japan’s uptake of Canadian beef.

Tuesday’s announcement on Canadian beef is part of a Japanese government decision last week that also allows access for OTM beef from the U.S. and Ireland, the association said.

However, market access through CPTPP “has provided Canadian exporters with a clear tariff advantage over our key competitors,” the federal government noted.

Said competitors include the U.S., which is now working on its own trade deal with Japan but withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership when President Donald Trump took office in 2017.

The federal government said Tuesday the decision builds on a “successful” G20 agriculture ministers’ meeting in Japan, and noted International Trade Diversification Minister Jim Carr will lead a trade mission to Japan and South Korea early next month promoting Canadian exports “including agricultural goods.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The sessions will be in Calgary Jan. 19 and Montreal Feb. 16. The council has been collecting written submissions for the last few months on the proposal for an agency that would replace provincial bodies across the country and be funded through an estimated $2 million a year in levies on farmers and imported pork and pork products.

Gary Stordy, spokesman for the Canadian Pork Council, welcomed the hearings, saying they will allow any objections to the current proposal to have a full airing while keeping the plan moving ahead. “Our provincial associations and pork producers across the country have been fully briefed on what the proposal entails.”

FPCC had no comment on what it had been told in the submissions.

Once it has finished its review, it will recommend to Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay whether to proceed with the creation of the agency.

A similar agency, Canada Beef, already exists for the cattle sector.

In a notice to the industry, the council says it needs to determine the level of support for the agency, its effect on farmers and importers, how the levies would be collected and what powers the agency should have.

The pork council submitted the proposal at the end of July after several years of pulling it together, says Stordy.

“The objectives of the national agency will centre on promoting the consumption of pork products in the domestic market, furthering development of export markets for Canadian pork and supporting the conduct of scientific-technical and market research initiatives. These objectives are intended to strengthen markets for hogs and pork, optimize production efficiencies, increase domestic consumption and enhance financial returns from the marketplace to the benefit of participants across the Canadian pork value chain.”

Pork producers in nine provinces already fund market promotion, development and research activities. While these efforts have been successful, “the increasing complexity of the issues impacting the sector, their interwoven nature and the escalating cost of addressing these concerns mean that a more strategic, co-ordinated approach is required.”

A national agency would be better able to fund domestic and export market promotion initiatives as well as increased “animal science and technical research aimed at improving production efficiencies and competitiveness of pork in domestic and foreign markets.”

The council said the agency would be able to better explain to consumers issues such as animal nutrition, animal welfare, quality assurance, animal health and environmental impact.

CPC notes that, “Over the past five (5) years (2010-14) Canada imported 198,000 tonnes of pork and pork products on average per annum. Live hog imports averaged a mere 2,600 head per annum over this same period, but could increase in future with given improvements to the U.S. animal health status.”

It said importers also stand to gain from a more concerted effort to grow the Canadian market. As a result, they should play a contributory and participatory role in the planning and direction of promotion and research initiatives.”

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“Imports continue to flow into Canada,” said Derrick Ash, director of national marketing for Canada Pork. Domestic pork consumption dropped by five per cent in 2013 and imports now account for 29 per cent of pork sales in Canada compared to 25 per cent in 2011. More information on the reasons for that growth is needed.

“We’re trying to rebuild Canadian market share by displacing imports, by increasing consumer demand for Canadian pork,” he added. Canada Pork was created last year as a producer and processor initiative to build that demand much as Canada Pork International has done for foreign sales. “We’re making progress on several fronts.”

A Verified Canadian pork label has been developed along with some new products. Canada Pork also plans to work on educating consumers and look for new ways to promote pork cuts.

Robert Serapiglia, director of business innovation for Canada Beef, said his organization “is aiming for a sustainable relationship with consumers. We want to promote the Canadian beef advantage and stress the excellence of our meat.”

His group will use its Canada brand to drive innovation and build consumer communications,” he noted. It has developed a video that shows how cattle are raised on farms across Canada with producers explaining their approach.

Canada Beef aims to get more farmers involved in promoting the sector and engaging with consumers, he said. “We want to find the sweet spot in the process.”

The drop in the value of the loonie compared to the U.S. dollar has helped ease the pressure of imports but the beef industry needs to keep working on the home front as well as exports, he added. As well, the industry will have to cope with tight cattle supplies through 2015.

Canada Brand will also be looking for global opportunities to build demand for Canadian beef, he said. The industry is using its Centre of Excellence in Calgary to look for ways to build business and connections.

Ash noted that pork accounts for 64 per cent of Canada’s total exports with beef at 32 per cent and poultry 18 per cent. About two-thirds of the pork exports are shipped to the United States and Japan. Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba account for 84 per cent of the pork production.

While the growth in exports has been a welcome development for the industry, “if any of our traditional markets closed, we couldn’t consume all the pork we produce annually.”

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According to a list from VPSS, Russia’s veterinary inspection service, only 15 Canadian pork and four beef processors can still ship to Russia because they don’t handle livestock treated with ractopamine. The release of the list was delayed several days by Russian authorities.

The Maple Leaf plant in Winnipeg can continue to ship pork to Russia while the Maple Leaf facility along with HyLife Foods in Neepawa are under temporary restrictions, says a list distributed by VPSS.

Quebec has 10 accepted plants, Ontario one, Alberta four and British Columbia three. Except for several Maple Leaf and Olymel plants, the operations appear to be smaller operations. The Canadian Pork Council says that prior to the latest crackdown, 42 establishments were approved to ship pork.

Unclear

It remains unclear what disqualified plants have to do to re-establish their export business. Pork Council spokesman Gary Story said, “We are focused on working with Canadian and Russian authorities to have other plants eligible to ship pork to Russia. The industry is also attempting to establish a ractopamine protocol the industry can use to help gain access to the market.

While Canadian pork is shipped to more than 120 countries, “Russia is an important market for Canadian pork,” he added. “Canada shipped 200,000 tonnes of pork with a value of $500 million in 2012.” Between 2009 and 2012, pork exports increased by 350 per cent and almost 500 per cent in value. Canada supplied 25 per cent of Russia’s pork imports last year.

Farmers feed ractopamine to livestock to increase the amount of nutrition they can consume from their feed. While Health Canada has ruled the product is safe for the animals and consumers, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan have banned it over health concerns.

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has said the Russian move is another example of trade restrictions being imposed without any scientific justification. “Despite our collaborative efforts, the Russian government is moving forward with this measure not rooted in science. We continue to work aggressively with Canadian industry to restore their access into the important Russian market.”

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association says the levels of ractopamine being fed to Canadian cattle are well below the internationally set limit. It blames low livestock prices in Russia for driving the trade barrier.

The additive enables the animals to digest more of their feed and this helps farmers be more efficient and reduce production costs.

In addition to Russia, South Korea and Taiwan have banned it over concerns that residues could remain in the meat and cause health problems even though considerable scientific evidence indicates it is safe.

Increased pressure

In December, Russia required all imported meat to have never been treated with ractopamine, which severely reduced beef shipments. Now it will only take product from plants that don’t handle animals fed the stimulant.

Russia had banned U.S. beef, pork and turkey because of ractopamine even though the additive isn’t used in turkey production. The U.S. has said it suspects the ban had more to do with American criticism of Moscow’s human rights’ record.

Russia imported 1.32 million tonnes of red meat, excluding offal, worth $5.12 billion from countries outside the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2012.

One option for Canada is to challenge the Russian action at the World Trade Organization, which Moscow recently joined. However, trade complaints take a long time to resolve at the international trade body.

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They hope to be in position ahead of any upturn in values fuelled by a drop in fresh meat supplies and the start of the U.S. spring grilling season.

But this year many traders are looking to marry any long position in the hog market with a short stance in cattle, as multi-year high beef prices look set to crimp beef demand and further accentuate pork’s appeal.

Spring rally

April lean hog prices have lost more than 12 per cent since the beginning of the year on the back of increases in domestic production and stocks, as well as a slowdown in U.S. exports.

But traders are anticipating a turnaround within the next month as demand picks up once the spring grilling season gets underway and Americans increase their consumption of pork chops, hotdogs and other popular meat cuts.

So pronounced is this pickup in outdoor cooking during spring that lean hog prices tend to display one of the most well-defined seasonal rallies of all commodities around that time, with April lean hog futures having rallied during the first half of April in four of the past five years.

Furthermore, this year’s pickup in demand is expected to be especially strong given lingering cold weather across the country that has kept a majority of Americans locked indoors for longer than usual, adding to pent-up demand for sunshine and barbecues once the weather warms up.

Pricey beef

Steaks and burgers usually also feature heavily on U.S. home-cooked menus during the spring and summer, but they may suffer from a drop-off in demand this year as ground beef prices reach record levels and steak prices hit eight-year highs at the grocery store.

Pork chop prices, by comparison, are slightly lower versus year-ago levels — about equal to ground beef prices and just over half the price (per pound) of sirloin steak at the grocery store.

This means that cost-conscious shoppers planning any early-season grill-outs will likely be tempted to scale back on any beef purchases in favour of pork over the near to medium term. That should not only fuel upbeat sentiment in the hog market but also underscore any bearish rumblings in the cattle and beef markets.

Position potential

Traders are gearing up to exploit this potential simultaneous run-up in pork demand and decline in beef consumption by going long lean hogs and short live cattle.

They’re also drawn to this trade by the fact that the value of a one contract position in each market (long hogs and short live cattle) is at its lowest level in more than 10 years, and so has abundant potential upside room from current levels, and very little precedent for declining further at this point in the calendar year.

One potential negative for the hog market over the near to medium term is the relatively high level of pork inventories currently in cold storage facilities across the United States.

But those stocks look set to be chewed through quite quickly if the expected swell in pork product purchases takes place once spring weather sets in.

Furthermore, while speculative traders have been actively funnelling money out of the hogs’ arena in recent weeks, managed money traders are already sitting on their largest net short position in lean hog futures and options in close to a year and so are unlikely to ratchet up short exposure at this juncture, given the well-known tendency for hog values to rally over the coming weeks.

Indeed, speculative money flow is likely to pour back into the hog arena as those traders pile on to the seasonal bandwagon as well, further accentuating any upthrust in hog values over the opening half of April.

So while the recent bias of lean hog values has been to the downside, the approach of the U.S. grilling season is prompting a number of traders to brace for a turnaround in that market before long.

At the same time, with beef prices close to record highs, many traders are adding a short cattle component to that hog trade so as to benefit from any drop-off in beef purchases that may be seen just as pork demand picks up.

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“In the last six months there has been a bigger jump in China’s beef imports from Australia because China blocked beef imports from Brazil due to mad cow disease,” said Jean Yves Chow, a senior livestock analyst at Rabobank in Hong Kong.

“China doesn’t buy from the U.S. because of the same issue as Brazil, so you don’t have many options but to buy from Australia. At the same time China’s demand continues to increase.”

However, the good news is offset by the loss of higher-value exports to Japan.

Australian beef exports to Japan, its second-largest market, have fallen sharply since the country allowed beef from cattle up to 30 months old, up from the previous limit of 20 months imposed following the 2003 BSE crisis.

Chinese investigate pig river dump

shanghai / beijing / reuters / The rotting bodies of about 6,000 pigs in a river that supplies tap water to Shanghai has drawn attention to an ugly truth — in China, one way or another, sick animals often end up in the food chain.

Authorities found traces of a common pig virus in some of the animals floating in the Huangpu River last week. Insiders say farmers likely dumped them, common in an industry which has no system of compensation for losses from disease and which insurers won’t touch.

Margins on pork are thin and for hog farmers unwilling to spend money to incinerate or bury dead animals, the Huangpu River may have offered a tempting alternative.

While there was no proof any sick animals had been butchered and sold for meat in this case, media have reported several scandals involving sick or dead livestock being butchered and sold for meat.

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moscow / reuters Russia will ban imports of U.S. turkey due to concerns about the use of the feed additive ractopamine, Russia’s Veterinary and Phyto-Sanitary Surveillance Service (VPSS) said in a statement Feb. 4.

The service will impose a temporary ban on U.S. turkey starting from Feb. 11, it said.

It earlier decided to ban imports of U.S. beef and pork from the same date for the same reason.

Ractopamine is a growth stimulant used to make meat leaner and which is banned in some countries because of concerns that it could remain in the meat and cause health problems, despite scientific evidence showing that it is safe.

Russia imported 356,800 tonnes of poultry worth $516 million from non-CIS countries between January and October 2012, customs data showed.

The United States Feb.1 strongly objected to Russia’s decision to ban all imports of U.S. beef and pork because it could have traces of the feed additive ractopamine, a growth stimulant to make meat leaner.

“These actions threaten to undermine our bilateral trade relationship,” Andrea Mead, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, said. “They are not consistent with international standards and appear to be inconsistent with Russia’s WTO (World Trade Organization) commitments.”

Russia’s VPSS said in a statement it would impose a temporary ban on U.S. beef and pork starting on Feb. 11.

The move has been in the works for weeks and appears to be one of several tit-for-tat moves taken by Moscow since the U.S. Congress passed legislation in December to punish Russian human rights violators.

Ractopamine is banned in some countries because of concerns that residues could remain in the meat and cause health problems, despite scientific evidence it is safe.

“We… continue to call on Russia to suspend these unjustified measures and restore market access for U.S. beef and pork products,” Mead said.

Russia got 7.5 per cent of its imported beef and 11.4 per cent of its imported pork from the United States from January to September 2012.

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Nicaragua had halted imports of Canadian beef in 2003, after the discovery of mad cow disease, or BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in a western Canadian herd. Many beef-importing countries halted beef trade with Canada that year as a result, although most have since resumed imports.

Canadian pork will now have its first access to Nicaragua, Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and International Trade Minister Ed Fast said in a statement.

In 2011, Nicaragua’s total beef and pork imports were worth $1.6 million and more than $17 million respectively.

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