Don't want US beef on Aussie supermarket shelves? Here's what you're risking

United States ranchers have come out all guns blazing over the lack of access Australia has given their fresh beef on biosecurity grounds.

They have urged their president to reciprocate with heavy-handed food safety and animal health audits.

Australia's cattle lobby has answered in kind saying this country's biosecurity requirements for red meat entering the country are simply not negotiable.

And that is completely unrelated to any discussion of potential US tariffs on Australian beef, Cattle Australia boss Chris Parker says.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association in America disagrees.

They say the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement benefits Australia at their expense.

Australia has enjoyed open access to the US for two decades and some years - like last year - ships a whopping 400,000 tonnes tariff-free. At the same time, fresh US beef remains banned in Australia due to what the NCBA has labelled "excessive biosecurity barriers".

The NCBA has been telling President Donald Trump that in the past 20 years, while Australia exported beef products to the US for US$28.7 billion, the US has only sold cooked beef products into Australia worth a measly US$31 million.

Cattle Australia says the NCBA should remember that the trading rules in place between the two countries have resulted in an overwhelming positive balance of trade for the US and a trade deficit for Australia.

The battle has set the Australian beef sector on fire.

Pushback has always been ferocious from the grassroots cattle producer in Australia over any suggestion of beef from another country hitting our supermarket shelves.

Many a protest march against beef imports has graced the pages of this publication.

Over the years, industry leaders with experience in the export sector have tried to make the argument that Australia can not expect to close its doors to beef from other countries when free trade has been its warcry for so long.

They've argued Australia exports three quarters of the beef it produces to other countries and the whole business - starting with the cattle market - would collapse if overseas doors were closed to us.

"When our beef industry relies so heavily on trade, this is reality," said Don Mackay as head of the Red Meat Advisory Council in 2018 when doors were opened to Japan to send high-end Wagyu to Australia.

That Wagyu has not flooded the Australian market and put Wagyu breeders out of business.

Nor will US fresh beef today, analysts say.

Australia would not be a particularly attractive commercial option for US steaks and mince, given the shortage of beef supply on home ground, they say.

Prominent meat trade analyst Simon Quilty said even when fresh US beef was permitted to enter Australia in the late 1990s the amounts sent were incredibly small - around 1000t per year.

"We are in a very crucial moment of negotiations with the US right now," Mr Quilty said, in reference to the potential for US President Donald Trump to slap tariffs on Australian beef in early April.

"We have over 400,000t of tariff-free access to the US. It is by far our largest single overseas beef market.

"Do we really want to risk that?"

Indeed, analysts have consistently pointed to the strength of demand out of the US at the moment as underpinning Australia's cattle market this year.

Biosecurity arguments that Australia has put forward as technical barriers to the entry of fresh US beef over the years have included an atypical case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, a disease linked with Mad Cow.

World animal health authorities no longer require atypical BSE cases to be reported, thus the US lobbyists' argument that Australia's biosecurity barriers are out of date.

Australian beef producers also often argue US traceability is not as strong as ours. The US does, however, have access to Europe, Japan, Korea and China, all countries where traceability standards are considered high.

Mr Quilty believes both these arguments are now incredibly tenuous but also harmful.

He says they undermine Australia's credibility in global markets.

"The animal disease threat to Australia at the moment doesn't present from the US. It lies in Indonesia where foot and mouth and lumpy skin disease are endemic," he said.

Angus Australia's chief executive officer Scott Wright, who is about to host beef people from around the globe, including many from the US, at the World Angus Forum in Brisbane, agrees.

He said Cattle Australia's policy on this issue was very concerning.

"And I'm not sure it is the view held by most in the industry," he said.

US consultants have told ACMAgri that opposition from Australia on US fresh beef imports right now was being viewed as Australian beef kicking an own goal.

The NCBA's comments - and Australia's tit-for-tat - had resonated in Washington, they said.