Canada stops meat shipments to China

Canada agreed Tuesday not to issue export certificates for meat, including both pork and beef, intended for China after ractopamine was discovered in Canadian pork products shipped to China, said the CBC.

Canada’s ag minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said today that the country’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police will look into the pork shipment in question to determine its origins. China claims the meat arrived with a falsified Canadian export certificate.

According to the CBC, 2.6 percent of the country’s beef exports last year went to China, but Charlie Christie, chair of the Alberta Beef Producers, said exports to China have grown dramatically recently. In the first quarter of 2019, imports of Canadian beef were up 445 percent alone, according to the Red Deer Advocate.

Ractopamine is banned in China, Russia and EU countries, but is legal in the U.S. and Canada. The drug is a beta-agonist, intended to cause an animal to produce more lean meat and is generally administered in the last few weeks of finishing.

–Staff report