Audio: Exploring Opportunities for U.S. Beef, Pork in Greater Russia Region

While Russia remains closed to most U.S. beef and pork products, opportunities to expand U.S. meat exports are still available in smaller markets in the Greater Russia region, including Georgia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

John Brook, U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) regional director for Europe, Russia and the Middle East, notes that USMEF is actively promoting high-quality U.S. beef to the hotel, restaurant and institutional (HRI) sector in these countries as well as exploring growth opportunities for U.S. pork.

Brook also discusses the overall decline in Russia’s meat imports, and the impact this is having on the meat processing sector. In 2014, Russia’s pork imports declined 47 percent from the previous year to about 407,000 metric tons. Beef imports saw a more modest decline, falling 7 percent to about 776,000 metric tons.

TRANSCRIPT:

Joe Schuele: In this U.S. Meat Export Federation report we speak with John Brook, USMEF regional director for Europe, Russia and the Middle East. With Russia still closed to most U.S. beef and pork products, Brook says USMEF staff in the region is focused on opportunities in adjacent markets.

John Brook: The main thrust is going to be in Ukraine, Georgia and Uzbekistan. There is always potential in all of those markets for quality product. In all of these markets there is an HRI industry looking for quality product and that is where U.S. beef stands out. So the work that our team will be doing in the region will be to encourage people in those sectors to use high-quality U.S. beef. At the same time we will always of course be talking about U.S. pork where it is relevant. Some of those markets of course have a strong Muslim population. But they are not at all closed to the use of pork and some of those countries have a tradition of eating pork.

Joe Schuele: Meanwhile Russia's total meat imports have fallen sharply, tightening supplies and putting pressure on Russia's meat processing industry.

John Brook: Imports into Russia have fallen dramatically. And so first there's a serious question of how much has domestic production been able to grow and replace imports. Or, is that product just not there anymore, and has consumption dropped as a consequence? the last couple of years when we were talking about Russia's drive to become self-sufficient in meat production, the production side was growing faster than the processing side. So the problem at that time was that they hadn't built the infrastructure on the processing/packaging industry as fast as they had invested in the actual animal production. And now, today, we understand that with the dramatic reduction is overall availability of meat, that some of those processing plants are now seriously underfilled.

Joe Schuele: For more on this and other trade issues, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.