National Pork Producers Council held its Legislative Action Conference in Washington, D.C., last week, with farmers from across the country meeting with their congressional representatives to address five priority issues.
Trade is always a top priority for the pork industry, and Vietnam is currently a particular market of focus, Jen Sorenson, NPPC president and an Iowa producer, said during a conference call with the media.
“Vietnam represents one of U.S. pork’s best near-term, export-market opportunities,” she said.
“Unfortunately, the United States faces several unwarranted tariff and non-tariff barriers that prevent us from supplying this major pork-consuming nation, which right now is dealing with African swine fever in its domestic herd,” she said.
Domestic pork consumption in Vietnam is greater than 2.5 million metric tons a year, yet it only imported 25,000 metric tons of U.S. pork last year, she said.
“Our producers have been asking members of Congress to work with the U.S. Trade Representative on efforts to enhance Vietnamese market access for U.S. pork,” she said.
Vietnamese tariffs on U.S. pork are double the tariffs on competitors’ pork, said Maria Zieba, NPPC assistant vice president of international affairs.
In addition, the U.S. industry has been working a decade on Vietnam’s ban on white offal, such as intestines and tongue, she said.
Pork producers urged members of the House to sign a letter cosponsored by four representatives to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai seeking her support for enhanced market access to Vietnam, Sorenson said.
Another top priority for pork producers is addressing the significant labor shortage in the pork sector, both on farms and in processing plants, she said.
“U.S. pork producers offer jobs with good pay and benefits, but most Americans simply do not live near our hog farms or harvest facilities and rural populations continue to decline, causing us to be largely dependent more and more on foreign-born workers,” she said.
Unfortunately, current visa programs fail to address the workforce needs of U.S. pork producers and other year-round livestock farmers, she said.
“Pork producers are asking members of Congress to address labor reform that both opens the H-2A visa program to year-round labor without a cap and provides legal status for agricultural workers already in the country,” she said.
NPPC also addressed three critical animal health-related issues with lawmakers, she said.
Those include $630 million in full congressionally appropriated funding for 720 new U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture inspectors, as authorized in 2020, to keep American agriculture safe from foreign animal and plant diseases.
NPPC is also calling for appropriations of $30 million as authorized by Congress for the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which provides disease surveillance and diagnostic support in cases of large-scale animal disease outbreaks.
In addition, NPPC is asking for tighter USDA regulation for the safe importation of rescue dogs from foreign animal disease-positive countries to protect U.S. livestock.
Rescue dogs are increasingly being imported into the U.S. from those countries for resale or adoption. While they are not known to be susceptible to or carry those diseases, there is the potential for bedding, crates or contamination of the dogs’ coats to serve as disease carriers, according to NPPC.
April 20, 2021
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Pork producers take priorities to Capitol Hill | Livestock | capitalpress.com - Capital Press
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