Suspension of beef imports from Mexico will have impact, expert says

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Suspension of beef imports from Mexico will have impact, expert says

Suspending beef imports from Mexico could have a significant impact on beef cattle prices, an extension expert says. About 5 percent of Brownfield’s feeder calf supply comes from Mexico, says Charley Martinez of the University of Tennessee. “We have now closed this valve immediately,” he says. “This happened overnight, and in an environment where we’re already limited in stock, we’re going to get ourselves to a point where we’re going to have even more limited stock.”

Over the weekend, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service temporarily suspended imports of live cattle and bison originating from or traveling to Mexico after New World screwworms were detected in cattle.

Martinez says this will have an immediate impact in border states like Arizona and Texas. “You have livestock operators who need cattle now, and they no longer have a supplier and will have to go to the sales barns and look for cattle,” he says. “Well, this will actually cause an increase in demand in the short term, and as demand increases, prices will also increase.”

He says the longer the suspension lasts, the greater the economic impact will be. “With this happening basically at the beginning of the beef supply chain, there will be price increases or cost increases for some of the players in the segment,” he says. “It will eventually reach the consumer.”

So far NWS has only been reported in the southern state of Chiapas near the Guatemala border, but it has not yet been detected near the US-Mexico border.

VOICE: Charley Martinez, University of Tennessee