RCMP still investigating fraudulent pork export

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police force is apparently still investigating a case of fraudulent pork export certificates that resulted in the loss of the Chinese market for much of last year.

Documents released under Access to Information show that a shipment of frozen pork tongues from a Quebec company, Frigo Royal, was made under a forged Canadian Food Inspection
Agency export certificate. 

The Chinese said the meat contained illegal residues of growth-promoting ractopamine.

Chinese authorities subsequently identified more than 70 fraudulent export certificates.

According to briefing notes for federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, the CFIA determined that the certificate with that shipment of frozen pork tongues “did not coincide with any CFIA-issued export certificates to China.”

It’s not clear whether the pork was actually from Frigo Royal or from Canada.

In a letter to Bibeau, the Canadian Meat Council noted that it was relying on the CFIA to oversee companies’ ractopamine-free standards and asked for CFIA to maintain strict adherence to China’s requirements.

The letter from five organizations that speak for the beef and pork industries said that China’s import ban would reduce Canadian hog prices by $30 a head, with $10 of that resulting from the loss of the Chinese market for pig heads.

The loss would be about $10 million a week.

Before the ban on June 25, Canada was exporting $6.6 billion worth of meat – 1.6 million tonnes of beef, pork, veal, horse meat and lamb.

China was Canada’s number two export customer for pork and number five for beef.

Among the beef-industry losses was frozen beef produced and packaged specifically for China; it was immediately worth 30 to 50 per cent less because it would need to be unpackaged and re-processed.

The beef packers also had long-term contracts to supply Beta-Agonist-free cattle and in some cases for specific genetics and branding.

The beef and pork industries complained that other agricultural commodities have business risk management programs to mitigate these kinds of losses, but livestock farmers have only Agri-Stability which is inadequate.

They also noted that U.S. producers are garnering billions of subsidies related to China’s tariffs.

Canada’s canola industry continues to be hard hit because China suspended imports by Richardson’s and Viterra, Canada’s two largest exporters to China which before those suspensions was importing about $2.7 billion worth per year.

Canada has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization and continues to be frustrated in its requests for face-to-face meetings with the Chinese to determine what pests they say they found in Canadian canola shipments.