Australia announces that China has lifted restrictions on meat imports

A Beijing’s decision is “another positive step towards stabilizing our relations with China”, declared Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell, quoted by Australian public television ABC.

China suspended meat exports from 10 Australian slaughterhouses from May 2020, as part of a series of trade measures against Australian products, after Scott Morrison’s former Conservative government called for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. .

The lifting of the suspension affects slaughterhouses Teys, Australian Lamb Company and JBS, although the remaining seven remain on the Chinese blacklist because Beijing claims the exporters mislabeled products or contaminated the meat.

Exports of meat products to China, Australia’s main buyer of lamb and sheep meat and the second largest buyer of beef, totaled around three billion Australian dollars (1,833 million euros) in 2019, before of the suspension.

Trade, political and trade relations between Australia and China began to improve following the rise to power in May 2022 of Australian Labor leader Anthony Albanese.

After several contacts between China and Australia, which included meetings between Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing continued to relax trade measures or announced the review of bans imposed since 2020 on products such as hay, barley, wood, wine, among others.

Faced with this pending task of normalizing trade with China, Australia’s main trading partner, Farrell promised that the Canberra Government will continue to press “for the removal of the remaining trade impediments as quickly as possible”.

According to official data, between January and August, Australia exported goods worth 6 billion dollars (5.5 billion euros) to China that had been the subject of Chinese blockades, compared to just 85 million dollars ( 79 million euros) in the same period last year.

Ties between Beijing and Canberra began to deteriorate in 2017 because of Australian laws against foreign interference or Australia’s exclusion of Chinese companies from the 5G network in 2018.

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