By Bruce Cochrane
The director of international trade, government and media relations with the Canadian Meat Council says every trade agreement Canada enters that expands market access improves the ability of Canadian beef and pork producers to maximize the value of the products they produce.
Last month the federal government completed negotiations aimed at securing a Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement which, once ratified, will provide duty-free access for an unlimited quantity of beef, veal and fresh chilled pork and duty-free access for 20,000 tonnes of frozen pork.
Ron Davidson, the director of international trade, government and media relations with the Canadian Meat Council, acknowledges Ukraine is not a major importer but it is useful.
Ron Davidson-Canadian Meat Council:
The importance of this agreement for the Canadian meat industry relates partly to our objective of having competitive access to every country in the world.
It's only by having access to the different countries that buy different things and have different stages of the supply demand situation that we're able to maximize the value of every carcass so we are very much in favour of adding as many trade agreements as we can possibly add and that provides our industry an opportunity to maximize the amount of money that they can return to producers from each carcass.
Last year we exported about 2,000 tonnes of pork valued at about $4,000,000.
They could take a range of products and we are hoping, with the duty free access which is coming forward, that we will be able to significantly increase our exports to Ukraine.
Even though it is not likely to be a major market it's certainly another option and that makes it important to us.
Davidson expects it to take about a year for the agreement to be ratified.
He notes a number of plants in Canada are approved to export to the European Union and any plant approved to export to the EU is eligible to export to Ukraine and several plants have expressed an interest in obtaining approval this fall.
Source: Farmscape