Therese Coffey to press China on lifting pork restrictions
Therese Coffey © Martyn Wheatley CCHQ/Parsons Media Defra secretary Therese Coffey will travel to China next week for talks with officials in a bid to end the last Covid-era restrictions on pork shipments from the UK.
China is the world’s biggest pork consumer and the biggest importer of UK product, including a vital destination for offal.
See also: Poultry exports to Japan cleared for business
The communist nation shut down trade with a slew of countries in 2020 when there were fears that Covid-19 could be spread on food products.
The collapse of the Chinese market was one of the contributors to the slump in domestic pork prices in 2021.
Since then, restrictions have been partly eased.
It is understood that half a dozen sites are now able to export to China, but another two, which had voluntarily ceased exporting during the pandemic, have yet to be relisted.
“We hope that the Defra secretary’s visit will help us get those remaining two plants over the line and relisted,” said AHDB director of international trade development Phil Hadley.
While trade globally is tough, figures show that, in the first eight months of this year, total pigmeat and offal exports to China came to 75,129t, worth £124.5m.
That compares with 126,723t, worth £203m for the whole of 2022.
Supply chain
It is understood that Defra is also close to revealing the results of its formal investigation into fairness in the pork supply chain.
Defra farm minister Mark Spencer said earlier this year that pig farmers need fairer written contracts, better data transparency, and more stakeholder engagement for that to be achieved.
Four things Farmers Weekly learned from Therese Coffey
- She said the Environment Agency needs to be “more agile” and build confidence with farmers over action to prevent flooding. The department is considering a range of options, including greater use of existing powers to lease land for use as floodplains in order to compensate farmers for flooded fields.
- Fears that farmers would not have access to imported maize and sugar beet seed, as well as some EU-manufactured sprays, have been allayed after Defra changed regulations to avoid a regulatory “cliff-edge” arising because of expiring EU law. The department said the rule change may save farmers up to £3.8m a year.
- Work on the Land Use Framework, a plan to balance competing demands on the countryside, is under way and scheduled to be published before Christmas.
- Some 15,000 English farmers submitted a formal expression of interest in joining the Sustainable Farming Incentive, with 1,594 already submitting an application in full and 923 agreements formalised. Defra says this is in line with expectations, and well ahead of where SFI 2022 applications had been this time last year.