Canadian meat industry urges MPs to reject U.K. membership in trade deal | 24CA News
Canadian beef and pork farmers annoyed by an ongoing dispute with Britain over meat exports are calling on members of Parliament to vote towards the U.Ok.’s membership in a significant Asia-Pacific commerce group.
“It’s unacceptable,” stated Canadian Cattle Association president Nathan Phinney in an interview Monday, two days after an announcement that the U.Ok. has been granted accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
“We’re not standing behind it, and we will oppose it with everything we have.”
The CPTPP, first established in 2018, is a buying and selling bloc made up of Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The settlement encompasses greater than 500 million individuals and 15 per cent of the world’s economic system. According to the federal authorities, Canadian exports to new markets by the CPTPP have elevated by greater than 35 per cent since 2018, reaching greater than $24 billion in 2022.
The U.Ok. — which is Canada’s third-largest single-country buying and selling associate — concluded negotiations in March to enter the CPTPP, making it the most recent member of the settlement and the primary new nation to hitch for the reason that buying and selling bloc was first established.
But the Canadian Cattle Association and the Canadian Pork Council, in addition to Canadian meat processors and exporters, say the U.Ok. doesn’t deserve a spot in a bloc devoted to open commerce.
The meat business has been indignant for years over what they are saying is the British authorities’s refusal to acknowledge Canada’s meals security and animal well being techniques — a refusal that has had the impact of severely limiting Canadian beef and pork exports to the U.Ok. in recent times.
One main sticking level is that the U.Ok. refuses to simply accept beef handled with development hormones, a typical agricultural observe in Canada.
The U.Ok. additionally rejects Canada’s use of antimicrobial livestock carcass washes in slaughterhouses.
While these are regulatory roadblocks, not tariffs, Canadian business representatives say they’ve nearly the identical impact.
They word that beneath the post-Brexit settlement that replicates the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, the U.Ok. prior to now two years has exported greater than 7,000 tonnes of beef valued at near $40 million to Canada.
In distinction, Canada exported simply 657 tonnes of beef valued at $7.6 million to the U.Ok. in 2021 and nil beef in 2022.
The scenario for pork can also be lopsided, with the U.Ok. having shipped 1,300 tonnes of pork valued at $10 million to Canada final yr, and Canada delivery zero pork to the U.Ok.
“I think at this juncture there’s just a real frustration,” stated Chris White, president and CEO of the Canadian Meat Council, which represents the nation’s meat processing crops.
“That inequity is something we’re quite concerned about.”
While different markets within the CPTPP are much more precious than the British market to Canadian beef and pork producers (for instance, Canada exported $142 million in beef alone to Japan between January and May of this yr), White stated the business is anxious a precedent is being set.
“Whatever the standards or the thresholds are for the U.K. to join the CPTPP, then that is the bar that is set for other countries to join the CPTPP,” White defined.
“If the U.K. gets in and they say, ‘We don’t recognize Canada’s food safety system,’ then how do you make the next country that wants to come in recognize it?”
International Trade Minister Mary Ng congratulated the U.Ok. Saturday on its accession to the CPTPP, saying that the advantages of the buying and selling bloc will develop with the U.Ok. as a member.
Each CPTPP member should nonetheless ratify Britain’s membership by a vote in its nationwide legislature.
Canada and Britain are additionally presently individually negotiating a bilateral commerce deal, and “continue to push for Canadian agricultural interests, including commercially meaningful access for pork and beef,” stated Ng’s press secretary Shanti Cosentino in an electronic mail.
However, British High Commissioner to Canada Susannah Goshko stated in an interview earlier this spring that the U.Ok. won’t again down on points corresponding to the usage of development hormones.
She went as far as to recommend that Canadian ranchers ought to contemplate altering their farming practices if they need entry for his or her beef to the U.Ok. market.
That’s a proposal Phinney, of the Canadian Cattle Association, strongly rejects.
“We have the science behind us. We have a world-class food safety system and a world-class product,” he stated.
“A lot of this has been politicized in the U.K., and you know, to be quite blunt, it’d be nice to see our Canadian government stand up for its producers the way the U.K. is standing up for theirs.”
Phinney added that if the federal authorities doesn’t reject the U.Ok.’s membership within the buying and selling bloc by a vote in Parliament, it needs to be ready to financially compensate farmers and processors for the losses that may end result.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
