Two years after President Barack Obama and Prime Minister
Stephen Harper signed a deal to facilitate agricultural trade, border-crossing
issues remain a major irritant for Canadian exporters.
“Canadian meat processors recognize and appreciate the progress that has
been achieved during the past two years on a variety of Beyond the Border
projects, including the Single Window and the Border Fees Transparency
initiatives,” said Canadian Meat Council President Arnold Drung who is also
chief executive officer for Conestoga Meat Packers at Breslau, Ont.
“At the same time, we regret the apparent absence of progress on the
promised bi-national pilot project on meat shipments,” Drung said.
In a news release, the meat council says “a promising initiative was
inclusion in the Beyond the Border Action Plan of a pilot project to
demonstrate the feasibility of eliminating border re-inspection of meat trade
between Canada and the United States. “
It hasn’t happened – yet.
“Meat that is exported from the United States to Canada is not
re-inspected at the border. Rather, it is allowed to move inland to one of
hundreds of Canadian federally registered establishments where any requisite
samples are collected and inspections performed,” the meat council says.
“Meat should move as easily from Canada into the United States as it
currently does from the United States into Canada,” said the council’s
executive director, Jim Laws.
“Indeed, meat should move as freely between Canada and the United States
as it does between most countries of the European Union,” Laws said.
The one-year pilot project for meat exported from Canada to the U.S. was
scheduled to begin in September of 2012, but still hasn’t been launched.
“Canadian meat exporters pay more than $3.6 million in fees annually to
privately-owned U.S. inspection houses
located near the U.S. border, and these fees are not regulated by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture so Canadian exporters are charged whatever the
inspection houses wish,” says the council.
There are no similar fees charged by Canadians on imports from the U.S.
Canada’s 400-some federally-registered establishments book annual sales
of $24.1 billion, beef exports of $1.3 billion, pork exports of $3.2 billion
and employ about 68,500 people, the meat council says.
