Ranchers Petition USTR for Safeguard on Imported Lamb, Seek Vote on TRQs
Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America's Sheep Committee petitioned U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to begin a safeguard investigation, and they say they want Congress to create a tariff rate quota for lamb and mutton, with the goal of domestic producers achieving a 50% market share by the 10th year of the TRQ.
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Currently, domestic sheep producers have 26% of the sheep meat market.
R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said, “America’s sheep industry is already past the breaking point and only with government intervention can we expect to reclaim for America a reliable and everlasting domestic source of protein-rich lamb, which makes this a matter of national food security.”
The sheepherding industry has declined by 60% in the last four decades, the group said.
The 33-page petition says, "It is no wonder that the U.S. sheep industry is being decimated by imports when import prices are consistently pegged below prices needed by domestic sheep producers to remain profitable. In 2014, the USDA stated that imported lamb 'is substantially cheaper than domestic [lamb]' and explained that a 65-75 lb. domestic lamb carcass was valued at about $255.00, whereas a comparable imported lamb carcass can be delivered to the U.S. for less than $200.00."
The trade group argues that Australia, where most of the imported lamb comes from, has two unfair advantages -- that country's ranchers are allowed to use poison to prevent predation of their flocks, and a weaker Australian dollar adds to its cost advantage. The U.S. sheep ranchers used to use the poison that Australians do, but it was banned because it was killing too many coyotes.
"These lower-cost imports originate from Australia and New Zealand and are displacing U.S. production of lamb and mutton at an alarming pace; and creating what soon will be an irreversible dependency on foreign supply chains for an important American staple. As revealed by the charts and data in the petition, this is by no means an exaggeration. Only with immediate intervention by the Administration and Congress can the impending, catastrophic outcome be averted," R-CALF USA wrote.
Australian mutton and lamb enters the U.S. duty free, under the U.S.-Australia FTA, which was implemented on Jan. 1, 2005. R-CALF USA complained that the FTA had safeguards for beef imports but not for lamb.
Imports from New Zealand also are climbing; some face less than a cent per kilogram tariff, the group said.
“We find ourselves at a pivotal crossroads in American agriculture. We are outsourcing the production of our food to other countries. I don’t know about you, but I cannot think of anything more dangerous than becoming dependent on another nation to feed Americans,” said Carson Jorgensen, a sixth-generation American sheep rancher. “The sheep industry is simply the canary in the coal mine. If we do not act now, not only will we lose the American sheep industry, but we will have opened the door to the ultimate decimation of American agriculture by way of imported food."