Lamb exports ‘have case to answer’

Press, 31 October 1981, Page 3

Lamb exports ‘have case to answer’

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

Serious challenges to New Zealand’s leading exports to the United States will not go away. The United States is New Zealand’s second largest market, worth $NZ794.3 million in the year ending last June. However. New Zealand’s three main exports — beef, casein, and lamb — remain under serious threat. The United States International Trade Commission had a chance yesterday to remove one of the threats — that against the lamb trade, valued at SUS3I.4 million last year. But it ruled that a case against lamb imports should continue, holding that there was a reasonable indication that they had injured, or threatened to injure, the domestic industry. The I.T.C. could have thrown out the case, in which American sheepfarmers are demanding the protection of a 15 to 20 per cent duty increase on imports from New Zealand. But it decided, by a four-two majority, that there was a case, to answer, and it could be February before a final decision is reached.

New Zealand exports of beef and veal (worth about SUS36S million last year) remain, along with lamb, under serious threat from new inspection and health requirements on all meat imports.

The Reagan Administration .opposes the new measures — which at their worst could halt meat imports — claiming that they amount to an ill-disguised protectionist move. But the Congress has spoken, and some form of restrictive legislation appears certain to arise from a joint conference of both Houses next week.

At that stage only a Presidential veto of the entire four-year Agricultural Bill,

to which the measures are attached, is likely to stop them becoming law. The precise effects are not yet known, but they will provide a new and unwelcome barrier to New Zealand’s trade. Casein is New Zealand’s second biggest export to America, with sales worth more than SNZ7B million last year. An I.T.C. conference yesterday put aside November 9 and 10 for a full-scale public hearing into whether quotas or import duties should be imposed. The Administration has opposed new restrictions, but President Reagan’s hand was forced by congressmen reacting to claims from dairy farmers that the imports displaced their own surplus non-fat dry milk — which continues to pile up in warehouses — from the processed food industry.

A decision on casein is not likely before the New Year. New Zealand’s three largest exports to the United States — accounting for more than half total sales — therefore remain under threat.

All have been subject to challenge for some years. All such challenges have been opposed by successive United States Administrations. All show no sign of going away. In Wellington, Mr Trevor Kerr, the general manager of the Meat Export Development Co, of N.Z., Ltd., which supplies about 10 per cent of the United States lamb market, said that the result was as expected. “This is clearly a first procedural step,” he said. “We would have preferred to have seen them throw the

case out, but we are still reasonably confident.’’ The general manager of the Meat Board, Mr Darcy Freeman, also said that the I.T.C. decision was not unexpected. “The later developments are the important ones,’’ he said.