The pigs of Dr. Mike Lemmon, each valued between 2,500 and $ 5,000, had to be on a plane to Hangzhou, China, from St. Louis in April, where they would pass the flight snoring, playing to fight and eating oatmeal and corn descascarillated before settling in Chinese pig farms.
On the other hand, many went to a local slaughterhouse in Indiana for less than 200 dollars each after the Chinese buyer canceled the order a week after China implemented retaliation tariffs against the United States in April.
China is one of the largest importers of American breeding pigs and other livestock genetic material, such as cattle semen. These lucrative export market niches had been growing, but they sold out since the president of the United States, Donald Trump, began a commercial war with Beijing.
American farmers and exporters said that the dispute has already cost them millions of dollars and has endangered the precious commercial relations that took years to develop.
Although Washington and Beijing agreed to pause the tariffs last week, exporters said Trump’s unpredictable commercial policy has caused their companies in the long term and could encourage China and other important buyers to resort to foreign rivals such as Denmark.
“Now we have damage to the brand. It doesn’t spend a week without customers asking what is happening with the United States,” said Tony Clayton, owner of Clayton Agri-Marketing, an export company with headquarters based in Missouri.
“I don’t know how we can recompose this. This is long -term damage,” he said.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said the administration was “working day and night to ensure billions of dollars in even more opportunities with our other commercial partners.”
Some farmers raise pigs specifically for breeding, a business niche within the swine industry of 37,000 million dollars in the United States. Farmers pay a lot of money for these special pigs, which have a favorable genetics to produce many healthy piglets that can eventually be processed in tasty and high quality pork.
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Trump’s commercial war costs the Farmers of US a lucrative Chinese export market for breeding of pigs and cattle semen
Lemmon, a veterinarian and owner of an Indiana farm, has been selling pigs worldwide for more than 30 years. He said he spent more than a year working on the sale of 2.4 million dollars from pigs with Pedigrí to China. He pointed out that they were carefully raised by their good health, the size of the litter and the high fat content that leads to a tender and richly veiled meat when it is cooked.
“It’s devastating when it happens,” said Lemmon, referring to the sale he lost.
He said he plans to remain in the breeding business and is working to revive the deal with his Chinese buyer during the tariff pause.
Approximately half of the pigs in the world live on Chinese farms. The country has bought large amounts of United States reproductive pigs since an African swine weighing outbreak, a virus with an almost total mortality rate, ended millions of pigs in the country in 2018.
Sending cattle is lucrative but requires a lot of time. Transporters must fly personally with animals or hire an on -board assistant who can make the rounds to keep their expensive passengers well hydrated and comfortable during a long flight. When they are not working, attendees talk with the flight crew or sometimes they go to sleep with animals in the cold load bay, exporters and farmers said.
China has also been the largest importer of US dairy cows, known for producing large amounts of protein -rich milk. But “not a single semen unit goes to China at this time,” said Jay Weiker, president of the National Association of Animal Breeders, noting that China had been importing a quarter of all the semen of American cattle, which they use to artificially inseminate their dairy cows.
The Chinese dairy industry began to import large amounts of cattle semen to improve the genetics of domestic dairy cows after a deadly scandal for contaminated milk in 2008, Weiker said. At least six children died in China and almost 300,000 became ill after a Chinese manufacturer added melamine, a dangerous chemist, to powdered milk to make protein levels look higher.
Brittany Scott, owner of Smart Reproduction Services, a sheep and goat genetics company, said several foreign clients had also retired from the agreements. This left many semen bottles in its Arkansas facilities, frozen in liquid nitrogen tanks and waiting for buyers. “They are eager to do their job,” Scott said about their male goats and sheep. “They understand the task and do it very well.”
However, the work of selling its product has been more difficult after Trump announced radical tariffs in April, and China retaliates.
Lost sales have been “a stomach punch,” said Scott.
With Reuters information.
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