Friday, March 29, 2024

Kiwi lamb gives Brits bad taste

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A leading figure in Britain’s National Farmers Union has disputed claims his organisation will not challenge New Zealand’s privileged position in the European and United Kingdom sheep meat markets in the wake of Brexit.
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At the end of his trip to the UK and Europe Beef + Lamb NZ chairman James Parsons last week said he detected no appetite from British farming leaders to use the UK’s departure from the European Union to try to chop back quota rights first negotiated in the 1970s.

Tariff-free access for 228,000 tonnes of sheep meat underpins the EU 28 as NZ’s single most valuable market and has all but shut competitors out of the UK where it accounts for 70% of imported sheep meat.

“We thought some of the farming leaders up here might have seen it (Brexit) as an opportunity to game things and look at renegotiating quota access,” Parsons said.

When pressed on why UK farming leaders would take a view almost certainly contrary to their own rank-and-file members Parsons said those leaders had accepted they could not ask their own politicians to push for free-trade deals to open up new markets for them in the wake of Brexit while trying to shut out imports from NZ.

“They are very aware that if they take a very protectionist stance and want to put up borders then that could come back to bite them on the backside.”

But NFU livestock chairman Charles Sercombe, who was among the farming leaders Parsons met in the UK earlier this month, said while his preference was to “respect” traditional trading relationships he argued the change in the composition of NZ’s trade from entirely frozen to largely chilled since the quota was first negotiated 40 years ago meant imports from NZ were competing more directly with locally-produced lamb than was originally envisaged.

“If we are shut out of Europe and are going to have to pay massive tariffs then we are not going to be very keen on NZ coming in tariff-free.”

Charles Sercombe

National Farmers Union

“I have no problem with NZ product at certain times of the year but will push for seasonality in any future arrangements, a fact James is more than aware of as it causes the most angst among UK sheep farmers.”

The pressure from British farmers to cut NZ out of the action would only increase if they lost access to the single market.

“If we are shut out of Europe and are going to have to pay massive tariffs then we are not going to be very keen on NZ coming in tariff-free.”

In last week’s interview Parsons again reiterated claims by the industry since the Brexit vote in June that World Trade Organisation rules meant the existing quota was legally watertight.

Sercombe said while the claim could be argued over by lawyers it displayed a tin ear to the shifts in international trade relationships building in the wake of the vote.

Rival producers from Australia to Latin America were eyeing NZ’s privileged position in the European and the UK sheep meat markets and they would inevitably come under threat as nations entered a phase of horse-trading as new trade deals were negotiated.

“NZ will have to give a bit because there will be others that will be trying to take what you are doing.”

Asked about market share being snatched from under the nose of NZ exporters Parsons played down the threat.

"There is a possibility of that but at the same time there are a hundred other scenarios that could be way worse than that that we haven’t even thought of yet … all of the sheep farming leaders that we have talked to want stability and we have not got any hint at all of opportunism in terms of trying to squeeze NZ out."

 

 

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