Japan has lifted a 23-year-old ban on imports of British beef. Japan placed a ban on imports of British beef almost a quarter of a century ago in 1996 following the outbreak of BSE in Great Britain. Japan is the third-largest beef importer in the world, buying close to 500,000t every year.

Brazilian beef exports for December stood at just under 127,000t, which was up almost 17% on the same month in 2017. This brings total beef exports from Brazil for all of 2018 to just over 1.35m tonnes, which is up 142,000t or 12% on 2017 beef exports.

Australian beef exports for 2018 stood at just under 1.13m tonnes, which is up 11% on 2017 beef exports. Japan, the US and Korea were the largest export markets for Australian beef. Australian meat exporters also shipped more than 267,250t of lamb on to world markets in 2018.

US grain farmers had another productive year in 2018. US farmers produced another bumper crop of maize (corn), with 2018 production hitting 376m tonnes. US soya bean production for 2018 came in at 128m tonnes, while more than 51m tonnes of wheat was harvested in the US last year.