China Now The Biggest Export Market For Australian Beef

An interesting article regarding China now being the biggest export market for Aussie beef.

What a shame about the disgraceful fraud in the market.

The article is one topic on ABC Landline at 12:30 PM today.

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Misrepresentation is apparently not uncommon (got to love English double negatives) and not so different from our getting ā€˜not the fishā€™. That second link is to a very small pilot study, but is probably representative of the industry.

While in the EU a few months ago the pervasive beef was advertised as Argentinean. Even Aussie themed places advertised Argentinean beef. It seemed to be ā€˜theā€™ selling point for quality, but how could a layman or even expert tell at the end of the day, or more specifically during a meal, where it originated if it was enjoyable? Trust? Actually blind faith!

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Decades ago when I first went to the NT on business, all the butchers were advertising Qld beef in their windows.

Qld butchers were advertising NSW beef.

Victorian butchers were advertising Tasmanian beef and Tasmanian butchers were advertising Victorian beef.

I never visited WA until 1998 but no doubt the highly parochial locals would have only been promoting WA beef.

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Itā€™s an oft quoted anecdote of every experienced cattle producer?

You never kill your own. The neighbours cattle always taste better. :wink:

Our local butcher buys mostly locally from SE Qld. Although realistically these days, where cattle are bred, raised, finished and processed does not recognise state boarders. Conditions and preferences for product types determine the final outcome.

P.S.
For many years NSW used a form of state quarantine to restrict foreign tick ridden cattle and pest riddled fruit entering through itā€™s boarders.

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Much like the old saying that the grass on the other side of the fence is always greener.

Our meat in FNQ has improved dramatically in the past few decades going from Braham cross rubbish which my old grandad described as being ā€œtick resistant and tooth resistantā€ to real meat like Angus, Hereford and such like.

And it no longer has to come from interstate or SEQ as there are now some producers right here.

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Still have to dip/treat to transport them, see the following of the treatment and procedures required:

https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/723296/Primefact-Cattle-tick-NSW-entry-requirements.pdf

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I wonder if it is a bit like Australian companies using terms like ā€˜Greekā€™ (yoghurt), ā€˜Italianā€™ (herbs), English (breakfast tea) etc, when the productā€™s origin is a different country to what the label alludes.

One might think that it could be 'the pot calling the kettle black

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I donā€™t see any real similarity as your examples are for generic references for those products to inform consumers what to expect the products to be like, and the packaging, at least in Australia, should show the country of origin,

Nobody would actually expect English Breakfast Tea to actually be grown in England but would expect it to be grown, and probably also processed, in Asia.

The article regarding Australian beef, which I also watched on Landline today, is about outright fraud similar to anyone in Australia selling imported Asian Sea Bass as Australian Barramundi, especially if it is labelled Product of Australia with an image of the Australian flag included.

But it is not actually Australians who are the victims of this fraud but the Chinese consumers.

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I understand what you mean, but I donā€™t think the EU holds similar views about many products. Havarti Cheese based on their rules must be from Denmark or it breaches their rules, maybe they will insist that Greek Yoghurt actually is from Greece or that English Breakfast Tea is actually blended in England (until or if the UK leaves the EU). However if the product is sold as Aus Beef and it is instead pork, duck or horse then it certainly is a rip off. If the beef however was raised in say Indonesia from Australian live cattle exports (or anywhere else in the World as long as it started out as Aus Beef) would the labelling be strictly incorrect? This is not an argument with your fraud statement as I agree with you on that but rather it is a point about subtle advertising claims that hide some of the truth behind clever usage of words.

Not knowing Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin or anything similar) I wonder if the products are cleverly, underhandedly, misdirecting the buyers eg This meat is just like Australia Beef or some similar translation trick??

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