A shift occurring in the US, with greater demand for lower-cost beef items, has pushed the price of beef cattle down over the past several weeks.
World Agriculture Outlook board chairman Gerry Bange says a positive in the US beef market is that exports are improving.
The US has essentially been playing catch-up as far as beef exports are concerned since December 2003 when many
countries banned US beef after a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSSE) was found in the US.
“We are seeing somewhat of a recovery in the Korean market - things are moving along,” Bange says.
“We’re also seeing somewhat of a recovery in the Japanese market.”
Those two countries were major buyers of US beef before 2003. The deal to reopen the Korean market to US beef earlier
this year was met with widespread protesting that temporarily stopped the deal from being implemented.
However, the furor has died down, and just three months later US beef accounts for nearly 50pc of the total value of Korean meat imports, the report says.
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