000407 Mexico Farmers Want 166% Duty On U.S. Meat

Mexico City - Mexican farm group National Agricultural Council wants a 166 percent anti-dumping duty on imports of beef from the United States.

Mexico's trade ministry imposed preliminary export tariffs of up to 215 percent on U.S. beef imports on Aug 2, 1999. It alleged the meat, was being sold across the border at artificially low prices.

According to El Financiero daily, the duty would be prohibitive for most beef imports, but not entrails, high value and added value cuts.

“The quotas would be as prohibitive as the imports were unfair,” CNA Director Miguel Garcia Paredes was quoted as saying.

He rejected suggestions that the proposed duty would make meat more expensive to Mexican consumers, but said domestic producers would need six months to raise output in line with demand. Meanwhile, he said, consumers had other options like chicken and pork.

According to Mexican academics cited by El Financiero, U.S. meat has been dumped on the Mexican market.

From 1994 to 1999, it said, Mexican beef products imports rose 100 percent, to 377,260 tonnes.

In December 1999, refrigerated boneless meat was selling wholesale for 32 pesos ($3.44) a kilo in the U.S. and 20 pesos ($2.15) on the Mexican border, the report said. This compared to a U.S. price of 15 pesos and border price of eight pesos in January 1994, it added.

The domestic industry lost more than 20 billion pesos ($2.15 billion) a year as a result of U.S. imports at unfairly low prices, the report said.

The U.S. produces 2.8 million tonnes a year of offal and irregular cuts that can not be sold internally, El Financiero said.

In Mexico, which produces around half that tonnage, such cuts are widely eaten.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com