Despite a 25% decline in production over the past decade, Germany remains a global leader in pork exports, particularly to the rest of the European Union.
Foot-and-mouth disease was recently detected in a water buffalo herd at a small exotic farm near Berlin. Germany immediately worked to isolate the impacted animals and trace the origin. But because of the FMD detection, most livestock products cannot be exported outside of the EU.
Restrictions on German pork because of this FMD outbreak could leave a void in some markets, but lack of market access and available products could limit the opportunities for U.S. pork, experts say.
Three of the main export markets for German pork present challenges for any market share gains for U.S. pork. The United Kingdom and Vietnam have significant tariffs on U.S. pork as well as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) barriers. And while the U.S. does significant pork trade with South Korea, most Korean imports of German pork are bellies, which are always in strong demand domestically in the U.S.
“U.S. exports to UK are minimal,” Erin Borror, U.S. Meat Export Federation’s (USMEF) vice president of economic analysis, said in the USMEF Audio Report. “This is an area where we’ve been saying, there should be great opportunity if we could have some type of reciprocal market access. But today, the combination of tariffs and quotas, and then on top of that, the SPS issues, our exports to UK are limited, highly limited.”
She adds that U.S. share into Vietnam is also minimal, partially because of the tariff disadvantage. Korea is mostly single rib bellies — product that the U.S. exports, but really just small volume, Borror explains.
“The U.S. consumer loves bacon, so that belly price is generally, on average, higher than the European belly price,” she says.
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