Canada and Vietnam strike dairy cow deal

Friday, December 6, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

The Canadian dairy industry has scored a major coup in Asia after federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced yesterday Vietnam’s largest dairy plant is negotiating a deal to buy 10,000 Canadian cattle next year.

The deal with TH Milk represents the single biggest order of Canadian dairy cattle to Asia and could be worth up to an additional $20 million for Canadian dairy farmers, he told reporters during a telephone press conference from Indonesia. He was in the region drumming up trade in Vietnam and attending the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meetings in Bali.

The deal would include technical support. The order is the result of ongoing market development in Vietnam by the Canadian Livestock Genetics Association and the Canadian government.

“I also mentioned that our animal feed industry will work with Vietnam to develop optimal feed products for their local herds,” Ritz explains.

Canada’s agriculture, food and seafood trade with Vietnam has more than doubled during the past two years to $152 million. Canada’s largest export to Vietnam is seafood, followed by soybeans, meat, canola and beef hides. There’s room for growth, Ritz notes. “A large population and improving incomes in Vietnam are expected to lead to higher levels of consumption, particularly of proteins led by meat.”

The bump in Vietnamese consumption of meat is also generating an increase in demand for animal feed due to their growing livestock industry.

About the WTO meetings, Ritz says for the past 12 years Canada and other WTO member countries have worked hard to complete negotiations under the Doha development round. International Trade Minister Minster Ed Fast and Ritz went to Indonesia “with a clear commitment of agreeing on a package of measures that would allow breaking the current impasse in these Doha negotiations by addressing a number of key issues of key interest to many countries around the globe,” such as trade facilitation, food security, import quota administration and export subsidies.

But the member countries hadn’t yet reached a compromise by the time Ritz was holding his press conference late Thursday afternoon. “A number of countries, led by India, continue to argue they need to be provided more flexibility with respect to the amount of support they can pay to their farmers to ensure their food security.” BF