USMEF Works to Diversity World Markets

While lower US beef production and tight beef supplies represent a challenge for US exporters, US Meat Export FederWtion, President and CEO, Dan Halstrom says the upside of this situation is that more opportunities are emerging in international markets for underutilized beef cuts and beef variety meats.

“The performance on beef was, I think, a pretty good sign because we all know productions down will remain down for the foreseeable future. But this is really an opportunity for the industry and for USMEF in particular, to work on maximizing the value of that carcass and really focusing in on some of the sub-primals that might be underperforming and and we've had quite a bit of success on the different cuts within the round primal, knuckles, insides, etc. - outside round flats- a lot of success there in in places like Taiwan, Korea, even in Mexico and Central America. We've seen some success on some of these cuts, shoulder clods, another area of the carcass and of course you can't forget variety, meats, variety, meats continue to be a very important part of the growth. We've got markets like Mexico showing growth. You had the Middle East and Korea and South America as well and even the Caribbean.”

Halstrom says USMEF’s goal here is to diversify as many markets as possible.