Quality Central To Promoting U.S. Beef Overseas

You can’t compete on price when much of the world can produce it cheaper. When U.S. beef competes around the globe, quality is its major advantage. U.S. Meat Export Federation Senior Vice President of Export Services Paul Clayton said that’s why quality is the mantra when U.S. beef goes global.

"In the foreign markets, of course, we are competitors with other beef countries," Clayton said. "And our high-quality beef really diversifies, or puts us in puts us in a different spot than them. So quality grades actually are very important. It is another way in which we do market U.S. beef is under the USDA quality grades. We do a lot of training on what those mean. And it becomes a recognizable brand or name in foreign markets."

High-quality brands, like Certified Angus Beef, see growing opportunity overseas. CAB Spokesperson Larry Corah said C-A-B sold 120 million pounds into the global marketplace this last year.

"We traditionally look at the export markets as being by-products," Corah said. "A lot of the, and even some of the hides, of course, would come to mind and some of the other types of by-products, but it’s incredibly valuable to the premium side of the beef market, as well. And for the Certified Angus Beef brand, we do sell a lot--we actually sold product last year into eighty countries. Forty of those were very active in terms of the amount that they buy, it’s about thirteen and a half percent of our premium brand, and so, it’s very, very important to utilize cuts and utilize that total carcass that has to occur."

The brand’s top international targets are Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, but in the last decade it has expanded into popular tourist areas in the Caribbean and in South America.

"We actually are selling a fair bit of product into Peru, Colombia’s an example, a little bit into Chile," Corah said. "And those markets have grown a lot in the last couple years, and we think in terms of the upside, because premium products are still unique to their market, they’re big, beef-eating countries, and they look for a high-quality type product, so that’s been a very good part of the global market for our brand."