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Foyle Food Group’s Donegal plant has become the first Irish plant to receive clearance to ship Irish manufacturing beef (mince) to the US market.
Michael Acheson, who is based in the US with the group, confirmed to the Irish Farmers Journal that approval was issued on Tuesday of this week.
“We are the first Irish processor to be approved. The team worked hard to meet the US requirements and we’re hoping to make the first shipments in the next couple of weeks.”
Competition
The main supplier of imported manufacturing beef to the US has been Australia, which has a 425,000t annual tariff-free quota. In 2015 it supplied all of this quota.
A newcomer on the scene in the US in 2017 is Brazil, which had 1,214t cleared by US authorities for entry up until the middle of March.
Brazilian export figures show that over 4,000t were shipped during the first three months of this year.
This is significant for Ireland as Brazil uses the same low-tariff quota as us. It is 64,000t for the entire year and by the end of March over 16,000t of this had been used.
Ireland was the first EU member state to receive approval to export beef to the US. The first shipments of beef were sent to the market in March 2015.
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