US-Iran Clash Disrupts Global Meat Trade: Reports

A growing number of headlines hitting the news as the US-Iran military conflict continues indicate closures of Middle Eastern ports are disrupting global meat trade.

Among nations reporting trouble shipping product to the Middle East are US suppliers and competitors Australia, Brazil and New Zealand.

Andrew Cox, Meat and Livestock Australia’s (MLA) general manager of international markets, told ABC News the nation’s exports of lamb, beef and sheep sent by air and sea are getting in to some extent, but noted 25,000 flights now having been canceled across the Middle East and some 1,000 boats are waiting to port in the Gulf of Aman.

“This conflict has been very disruptive,” Cox said. “The sheep meat particularly plays an important role in food security across the region. The good news is our product is getting in via some ports that are open, but [is] heavily constrained. And, of course, as long as this conflict continues, those constraints will compound.”

Cox said that under the circumstances, Australian exporters are busy trying to divert product to other markets. Australia’s meat industry ships to more than 100 markets around the world.

The situation is similar in Brazil, where the nation’s Agriculture Ministry is issuing temporary emergency measures to facilitate continued meat and poultry exports to the Middle East, which reportedly accounted for 30% of Brazilian meat exports last year.

As local news outlet Globo Rural reported, those measures include “extending the validity of sanitary certificates, allowing the internal relocation of shipments that were unable to be exported, permitting documentation changes to redirect exports to new destinations and authorizing temporary storage in refrigerated containers.”

In New Zealand, some companies also are working to get beef shipments back to their homeland to sell on the domestic market.

It’s not always easy to just move product to other markets, as ANZCO general manager of sales Rick Walker told local news outlet RNZ. He noted some of his company’s beef has specific Arabic labeling that would make it difficult to divert to other markets.