Canada hopes to resume China meat exports before pork investigation ends
- Agriculture minister says she hopes Beijing will reopen market after new safety measures are applied
Canada is hoping to resume meat exports to China even before finishing an official investigation into forged documents that triggered a ban by Beijing.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to reassure our Chinese trading partner with additional safety measures to our export system so they can reopen the market even if the investigation still needs a bit more time,” Marie-Claude Bibeau, minister of agriculture and agri-food, said in an interview.
The forgery was discovered by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency after China informed Canada on June 14 that a pork shipment was found to contain ractopamine.
Canada told China about the fake document as it was a potential public health issue, Bibeau said. Beijing then decided to temporarily halt meat shipments.
“This means that we had a breach in our export system, but it’s very, very specific to Canadian meat exports to China and so it doesn’t apply to any other agricultural or agri-food products,” she said.
