Dairy cow cull threatens US beef quota mark

The high rate of dairy cows currently being culled has sparked concerns that New Zealand beef exports to US could see it run out of its 2015 quota. We could do a follow up on this assessing its possible impact on New Zealand beef sector. Most of these cows are sent to the American market as manufacturing beef for hamburgers, but so many were being killed in response to the slump in milk prices that  New Zealand may run out of its quota going into the USA, Beef+Lamb New Zealand farmer council chairman Martin Coup said. New Zealand’s tariff rate quota for beef exports into the US sat at 213,402 tonnes per annum and the last time that quota was filled was 2004. “That’s going to have an impact on how processing companies buy stock because if they are buying bulls and buying cows that are potentially going into the US market, when it comes to December they might run out of quota.”Coup feared that it could mean no access to that market once the more expensive, value added cuts were ready for export later this year and they would instead have to be sold in other countries where the price might not be as high.”There’s a little bit of concern about what might happen if this quota kicks in,” he said. At the end of June, 69 per cent of that quota had been filled, about 9 per cent more than last year, Meat Industry Association chief executive Tim Ritchie said. That equated to about a 14 per cent increase in quota usage.