BEIJING: Export registrations for more than 1,000 US meat plants granted by China under the 2020 “Phase 1” trade deal lapsed on Sunday, China’s customs website showed, threatening US exports to the world’s largest buyer amid an ongoing tariff standoff.
The registration status for pork, beef and poultry plants across the US, including major producers Tyson Foods, Smithfield Packaged Meats and Cargill Meat Solutions was changed from “effective” to “expired,” according to the website of China’s General Administration of Customs.
The expiration of roughly two-thirds of the total registered facilities could restrict US market access and incur significant losses to a roughly $5 billion trade, a fresh affront to American farmers after Beijing earlier this month imposed retaliatory tariffs on some $21 billion worth of American farm goods.
Beijing requires food exporters to register with customs to sell in China.
The US Department of Agriculture has said China did not respond to repeated requests to renew plant registrations, potentially violating the Phase 1 trade agreement.
Under the Phase 1 trade deal, China is obligated to update its approved plant list within 20 days of receiving updates from the USDA.
Registrations for some 84 US plants lapsed in February and while shipments from these affected plants continue to clear customs, the industry doesn’t know for how long China will allow imports.
China’s customs department did not immediately respond to faxed questions.
In 2024, the US was China’s third-largest meat supplier by volume, trailing Brazil and Argentina, accounting for 590,000 tonnes or nine percent of China’s total meat imports.
US meat exports at risk as China lets registrations lapse
https://arab.news/z9cga
US meat exports at risk as China lets registrations lapse
- Expiration of roughly two-thirds of the total registered facilities could restrict US market access
- In 2024, the US was China’s third-largest meat supplier by volume, trailing Brazil and Argentina
Sudanese man jailed in UK for murdering asylum hotel worker
- Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024
- He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver
LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker was jailed on Friday for a minimum of 29 years for murdering a woman who worked at the hotel in central England where he and other migrants were being housed.
Anti-immigration activists have seized on other criminal cases involving asylum seekers, predominantly young men, in hotels to argue that they are a danger to nearby communities.
Last summer, a number of protests at asylum hotels across England – sparked by the arrest of an Ethiopian asylum seeker for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman – turned violent.
The Labour government, nervous of the rise of the anti-immigration Reform UK party in opinion polls, has promised to clamp down on illegal immigration and, by 2029, to stop placing asylum seekers in hotels while their cases are processed.
Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024 after she finished her shift.
He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver. She died in hospital three days later.
Majek was convicted in October and sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment with a minimum of 29 years at Coventry Crown Court, where some anti-immigration protesters gathered outside for the hearing.
Judge Michael Soole said the murder was “particularly vicious” and told Majek there had been a “chilling composure in every aspect of your behavior.”
