Germany is hopeful of progress in its efforts to persuade China to relax import bans on German pork imposed after African swine fever (ASF) was found in the country, Germany’s agriculture minister said on Wednesday.
China and other pork buyers banned imports of German pork in September 2020 after the first ASF case in Germany, causing Chinese pork prices to surge and German prices to fall.
Germany reiterated a request for regionalization of pork import bans by China in inter-government consultations between Germany and China on Wednesday, the ministry said.
This would mean stopping pork imports from the region of a country where ASF has been found but not a blanket ban on sales from the whole country. ASF has been found only in wild boars, not farm animals, in parts of east Germany.
Experts from the German and Chinese governments will hold more talks about the regionalization concept in the near future with the aim of allowing pork exports to resume from German regions free of ASF, German agriculture minister Julia Kloeckner said.
“This is a positive signal and an important step towards the resumption of deliveries of German pork,” Kloeckner said. “I am regarding the negotiations with confidence, they are an important step.”
In the consultations, Germany stressed that ASF was contained in two east German states among wild boars, with no cases in farm animals, she said.
Other countries have agreed regionalization concepts for German pork imports.
Some 1,035 ASF cases have occurred in the two eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony, all in wild animals close to the border with Poland where the disease is widespread.
German pork prices have been stable this year. Other EU countries, including Spain and Denmark, raised exports to China and elsewhere in Asia, opening up opportunities for German pork sales inside the European Union.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan, editing by Jane Merriman)
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