China renews export facility registrations for pork and poultry; beef still waiting

China renewed a slate of expiring registrations for U.S. facilities exporting pork and poultry to the country, according to industry groups. However, several hundred beef facilities also saw their licenses expire on Sunday but are still awaiting renewal.

Export registrations for hundreds of pork, beef and poultry facilities that ship products to China were set to expire on Sunday, including many run by meat processing giants Tyson Foods, Smithfield and Cargill. The Agriculture Department had reported last month that it was engaging with Beijing on registrations that expired in February but was not receiving responses from Chinese customs officials, causing consternation among U.S. industry.

Trade groups representing meat exporters said on Monday, however, that Beijing has renewed registrations for the pork and chicken facilities.

“This gives us assurances that pork facilities approved to export to China can continue to do so,” said Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation president and CEO. The renewals ensure uninterrupted access to the Chines market for more than $1 billion of pork product annually.

“U.S. pork producers now have maintained access and increased certainty to export their products to the 1.4-billion-person Chinese market,” National Pork Producers Council CEO Bryan Humphreys said in his own statement.

Halstrom said the group had not received word on the future renewal for the approximately 400 registrations for beef facilities that expired Sunday. However, the USMEF noted in a statement that renewals for pork could bode well for beef exporters.

“The pork facility updates are encouraging,” a statement reads.

The USA Poultry and Egg Export Council also confirmed in a statement to their membership that more than 200 poultry facilities whose licenses expired in February and March had seen their registrations renewed.

The statement called the development “a blast of good news.”

USDA did not respond to Agri-Pulse’s request for comment Monday, but a Foreign Agricultural Service official said late Friday that it was “actively engaging” the General Administration of Customs of China on the renewals.

“I think this whole exercise the last few weeks is a bit of a wake-up call,” Halstrom said.  “There's been a lot of focus in the press for months now about tariffs, and while that is a concern, there's quite a few examples where non-tariff trade barriers can be just as, if not more impactful.”

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