In early November, CCA President Nathan Phinney travelled with CCA staff to London in the UK and Brussels to meet with British and EU officials.
In both capitals, we were greeted by the top Canadian diplomats for a briefing on the local political scene and current priorities. Sustainability is high on the list in both and we were advised that information on Canada’s sustainable beef initiatives would be useful topics of conversation which could form the basis for future collaboration.
We did indeed find that in Brussels, following the Parliamentary elections last summer, there is potential for a shift away from the more extreme “green deal” thinking. There was genuine interest from the environment officials we met in learning more about sustainable beef production in Canada. We left the door open with an invitation for EU representatives to come to see what we do and understand the context in which we operate.
In the UK, we heard the general view that agriculture will not be as high in the new Governments priorities and there will be more focus on food security. There was no clear priority in terms of getting back to the negotiating able with Canada .
We had frank conversations about the frustration Canadian producers feel over the imbalance in beef trade. We stated bluntly that we were once a promoter of trade with the EU and UK, but the potential value of these markets has been undermined by regulatory burden. Short of them recognizing the Canadian meat inspection system as a whole, neither the EU nor the UK are going to be worth the expense of customizing Canadian processing practices to their specifications.
Thus we are at a fork in the road where CCA can no longer be an advocate for open trade between Canada and the EU or UK. We left the EU and UK officials with a clear message that while we can continue working together on a shared vision for global sustainable beef production, CCA will be exploring ways to curtail European and British beef from entering Canada.
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