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USMEF predicts minimal U.S. impact from Brazil strike
A U.S. Meat Export Federation spokesman tells Brownfield the Brazilian trucker and dockworker strike might not affect the U.S. meat industry very much.
Joe Schuele tells Brownfield the real impact in the U.S. will be for a few companies exporting specialty cuts of beef to Brazil. “That isn’t going to have a big impact on U.S. exports overall, but for those companies that have gotten their plants and their products and labels approved to move product into Brazil, I would assume the truckers strike is a concern for them.”
Schuele says U.S. producers might not gain many international sales, even though Brazil is having trouble moving product to ports. “U.S. red meat in many cases does not compete head-to-head with Brazil. We tend to serve a lot of markets that Brazil either doesn’t have access to or doesn’t ship much product to. For example, they don’t serve Japan. They just started to get a little bit of pork into Korea but they don’t send beef to Korea.”
There are reports of meat rotting in Brazilian trucks and chickens being killed because producers cannot get feed delivered to farms. Drivers and dockworkers are refusing to work because of high fuel taxes.
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