The country banned Canadian beef in February last year after the detection of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or ‘mad cow disease’, in a Black Angus beef cow in Alberta.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in November contaminated feed was the most likely cause of the disease and no part of the cow had entered human food or animal feed systems.
Canadian and South Korean officials confirmed on December 30 the ban had been lifted after no further cases of the disease were reported.
In 2014, Canada was South Korea’s fourth-largest source of imported beef following Australia, the United States and NZ, according to the Yonhap news agency.
However, the resumption of trade wasn’t expected to have much impact on NZ’s beef exports to the country, according to the farmer-owned industry organisation Beef + Lamb NZ.
“The resumption of Canadian beef exports to South Korea will not mean very much for NZ beef,” Tokyo-based John Hundleby, Beef + Lamb’s market manager for Japan and Korea, said.
“While the re-entry of Canadian beef to the Korean market will obviously offer the trade and consumers in the country another option, broadly speaking, NZ and Canadian beef are not in direct competition with each other. Australian beef is far and away the largest direct competitor for NZ beef,” he said.
Hundleby said Canadian beef’s presence in the Korean market has historically been relatively low.
In the 2014 calendar year, the 2739 tonnes of Canadian beef sent to Korea accounted for just 1% of total imports, while the 20,961t of NZ beef imported to the country in the same period accounted for 7.5% of total imports, he said.
Following any sort of scare, it typically took time for consumers in Korea to regain confidence about an affected product so it was probable that imports of Canadian beef would be at relatively low levels for at least several months, if not longer, he said.
In 2014, South Korea was Canada’s sixth-biggest beef export market by volume and the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association said the resumption of access to South Korea was important for Canada’s beef producers.
“South Korea holds huge potential for beef and especially cuts and offal that are underutilised here at home,” association president Dave Solverson said. “Korea is a market that will pay more for those select items and that helps to increase the overall value of the animal for producers.”
Canadian beef exports to South Korea were worth C$25.8 million in 2014, and the association expected the implementation of the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement in late 2014 meant the market had the potential to exceed C$50 million a year.
South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said as an extra precaution, it would conduct random sample tests on 5% of all Canadian imports instead of the normal 3%, and would send inspectors every year to beef export facilities in the country to make certain they follow internationally set rules of safety, Yonhap reported.
BSE can cause the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
