Suffering from at least $50 million a week in lost beef exports, the U.S. cattle industry is fighting back with an assist from Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan.
Now a Texas cattle rancher, Ryan is part of a campaign by the Denver-based U.S. Meat Export Federation to help rebuild the markets lost in 2003 from concerns over mad cow disease.
Beef-industry officials also are hoping to capitalize on the growing middle class in developing countries, where consumers are expected to eat more beef in the coming decade.
The 60-year-old former hurler discussed his tour of Japan last July that was a high-profile event in the beef-promotion effort.
“We got really good acceptance over there in Japan,” Ryan said Monday while attending a global beef conference presented by the International Livestock Congress.
“It’s a slow process because of the political issues involved,” he said, “but I think their people want more U.S. beef.”
Japan was the top American beef export market until December 2003, when the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as BSE or mad cow disease, was discovered in the U.S. Japan and several other countries banned U.S. beef. While some exports have resumed in Japan and elsewhere, they are far lower than pre- 2004 levels.
Speakers at the conference said the U.S. cattle industry is still hard-hit by diminished exports, despite findings by an international standards board that the beef is safe for consumption.
“We have continued U.S. industry losses because we have only partial access for our beef products,” said Joel Haggard, senior vice president of the U.S. Meat Export Federation. “If we were running on all cylinders, our industry would be much healthier.”
Japan had partially lifted the import ban in 2005 but later reinstated it after a veal shipment from the U.S. was found to contain part of a backbone, defined by Japan as a risk material under its BSE policies.
Japan now allows the import of U.S. beef from cattle less than 21 months old, considered to have low risk for contracting the disease.
Still, Japan in 2007 imported only an estimated 46,500 metric tons of U.S. beef, a fraction of the 375,455 tons it purchased in 2003.
Worldwide, U.S. beef exports last year of 677,000 tons were about 53 percent of 2003 totals.
Randy Blach of livestock-research firm Cattle-Fax noted that international consumption rates of poultry and pork have grown faster than beef over the past 50 years.
Blach said he expects beef to make up some of its lost ground over the next decade as marketing campaigns and growing personal incomes in foreign countries help induce consumption.
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
