You don’t normally associate China and it’s 1.3 billion people with beef but a growing middle class in the Orient is making it more popular among consumers. China’s middle class today is the size of the ENTIRE United States.
Senior economist Fred Gale with the USDA says “Steak houses have become a new fad in recent years and Brazilian barbecue is also a popular type of restaurant found in a lot of cities.” Gale adds that fast-food chains including McDonald’s and Subway have also contributed to more demand for beef…..as well as high-end hotels with “western” style restaurants.
Cattle have existed on mainland China for thousands of years, originally as draft animals. Rural areas actually had taboos against eating beef because the animals were too valuable.
In 2005 seven million tons of beef were produced, mostly by small ranches, making China the third largest beef producer behind the US and Brazil – but consumers want more.
In 2003 a BSE scare closed US beef imports to China. Gregg Doud, chief economist for the National Cattle Growers Association, says “Despite China’s high level political commitment in 2006 to re-open its borders to U.S. beef, this is the only market that remains completely closed to our product….we haven’t been able to even discuss normalizing trade with the Chinese for two years as a result of the argument on Capitol Hill about other issues, including the importation of cooked poultry from China.”
Overall the Oriental market remains a major source of growth for U.S. beef producers with exports to the region growing at 50% annually. The Nationalcattleman.com website quoted Jim Peterson, a rancher from Buffalo, Montana who recently visited Asian countries as saying “If we could develop these Asian markets and get our access back to anything close to what it was in 2003, the economic stimulus would be huge for U.S. livestock producers.”