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After two decades in exile, sheep meat exports to the USA are likely to resume early next year. The US Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced yesterday that it is proposing to amend its agency’s import regulations to allow meat from small ruminants (sheep and goats) to enter the US market for the first time since the BSE / Scrapie ban was imposed in 1996.
This was a dodgy ban from the outset with no scientific basis and made worse by the fact that they accepted product from other countries such as Canada and Japan who have the same controlled BSE risk status as Ireland. The US are now proposing to align their rules “with scientific understanding & international guidelines” set out by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
Opening the US market
Sheep farmers (and processors) often see themselves as the poor relation when it comes to opening markets and this will be a welcomed announcement and an essential step on Ireland’s road to opening the US market as an export destination. It has been a work in progress for some time and this is a key milestone. For sheep producers in Northern Ireland, their approval process for US access is wrapped up in the joint beef and sheep application. Approval visits are currently awaited and it is thought likely that it will be well into 2017 when approval for the UK is secured.
Although lamb consumption isn’t particularly high in the US, it is still a market that imported 78,000 tonnes of sheep meat in 2014. Australia is the main supplier sending over 58,000 tonnes while New Zealand has supplied just over 15,000 tonnes annually for the past two years. To put these numbers in context, Bord Bia estimated Ireland produced a total of 58,000 tonnes of sheep meat in 2015, of which 47,000 tonnes was exported.
Potential for lamb
Selling of Irish lamb in the two decades since the US ban was imposed has been transformed. Back then it was essentially a business of killing the lambs and shipping the carcases, predominantly to France and most of the remainder to the UK. Now the carcase business has seriously reduced being replaced by sending out boneless and processed lamb. France is still the main market taking 16,000 tonnes in 2015 but the UK was a substantial second with 13,000 tonnes. Sweden is next taking 4,000 tonnes, almost a third of Swedish lamb imports and then Germany and Belgium with 3,600 tonnes each.
Meat Industry Ireland (MII) the factories trade association are optimistic about the potential for lamb and recently launched a plan calling for an increase in production by a million lambs per year. Agriculture has had a prolonged period of depressed commodity prices but lamb prices have fared better than others. The possibility of a new high value market in the US in the next year will create at least some opportunity and also compliment the fledgling beef export business to the US.
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