” If you have more trade barriers, it could lead to the reshuffling of global areas,” said Kimberly Crewther, senior director of the official figure Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand.
The cheese industry’s top exporter in the world is New Zealand, which also serves as a hub for foreign businesses, including European cheese producer Danone.
” We always prefer to see situations where trade is stable and certain… Markets do n’t like uncertainty”, Crewther added.
According to Chinese customs data, the Union accounted for at least 36 % of the total goods in 2023, just trailing only New Zealand. Australia was its next- largest exporter.
While it remains unclear which merchandise China could target for retaliation, whey flour, milk and fresh butter were the top items in the EU’s €1.7 billion ( US$ 1.8 billion ) worth of cheese exports to China last month, according to information from the European Commission’s Directorate- General for Agriculture and Rural Development, which cited Eurostat.
Countries including the Netherlands, France, Germany, Ireland and Denmark have the largest dairy market exposure to the Foreign business.
The Netherlands, Denmark and France are also major suppliers of meat, though Spain was China’s top vendor last month, making up roughly 23 per cent of its total pork imports, followed by Brazil and the United States.
” We are worried”, Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, France’s largest farmers ‘ union, told reporters when asked about possible Chinese action against pork imports from the EU.
China is an important market, and there are some parts of the pig that are not eaten in Europe, which means that trade with some nations is a possibility.
China imported US$ 6 billion worth of pig, including offal, from around the world last year.