China uses beef ban as a diplomatic lever but Hunter farmers have alternative markets

Happier times: Casino Beef Week in 2018. Chinese Consular General Gu Xiaojie with Northern Co-operative Meat Company directors, Rob Sinnamon, Neil Summerville and Kevin Flack. The Casino abattoir was developing closer relations with its Chinese customers.

CHINA'S decision to ban Australian beef exports from four east coast abattoirs appears to be the direct outcome of a threat made a fortnight ago by China's ambassador to Australia, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison's justified call for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

Yesterday, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham attempted to play down links between the inquiry call and the beef ban, saying that the Chinese were acting on "technical" and "labelling" issues that had been flagged with Australia previously, in some cases more than a year ago.

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Mr Morrison also disputed a coronavirus link to a sudden escalation of a simmering trade dispute between the two nations over barley, with China threatening to introduce anti-dumping tariffs of up to 80 per cent on Australian exports of the grain, which is used for livestock feed and brewing beer.

In that case, he may be correct, as the barley dispute has been widely interpreted as revenge for a range of tariffs that Australia has slapped on Chinese steel and aluminium in recent years through our own Anti-Dumping Commission.

China sees this mechanism as unfairly protecting our two domestic steelmakers - Infrabuild/Liberty Steel, which runs Whyalla steelworks and the Newcastle rolling mills, and the Port Kembla based BlueScope Steel.

Either way, China's ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, flagged the beef dispute in late April when he responded to Mr Morrison's inquiry call by saying it might lead "ordinary" Chinese to ask: "why should we drink Australian wine, or eat Australian beef?"

With the "technical" groundwork laid, it would not be the first time a country has kept a dispute or two "in the bottom drawer" to bring on at a time of its choosing.

Singleton beef producers Steve and Liz Binnie run one of a number of Hunter farms that are affected by the abattoir ban - either as direct sellers or as breeders of young cattle sold to other farmers before being slaughtered.

But just as Melbourne's Cedar Meats abattoir has been closed after a COVID-19 cluster, abattoirs across the world have been forced to shut after proving fertile breeding grounds for the coronavirus.

The resultant beef shortage and high prices mean Australian producers should have ample alternative and profitable markets if China decides it will continue to do without imports of the finest Hunter wagyu in order to make a political point.

ISSUE: 39,604.

Cattle producers at an information day held at the Casino abattoir in 2018. Abattoir staff are showing the difference between carcasses, with the better-fed animals on the left.

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