Cattle call.(Trade Talk)(Beef cattle)(Brief Article)

An expected Mexican decision to allow U.S. beef back in Mexico could help economies on both sides of the border. A third of U.S. beef exports, worth US$566 million a year, ends up in Mexico.

Ever since the December import freeze, after mad-cow disease was discovered in Washington state, meat prices shot up 40% in Mexico City. "Right now there is no meat--it ran out 10 days ago and we don't know when we are going to buy more," says Claudia Arciniega, manager of a Tony Rome's restaurant in Mexico City. "The [price] hike has hurt our economy and we have lost a lot of customers."

Mexico, the second-largest importer of U.S. beef after Japan, is one of 30 nations that had suspended the beef trade with the United States. Mexican cattle ranchers insist the government ban is good for public health, not just their own sales. In any case, ranchers say, a short-term price hike doesn't help Mexican producers that much.

"For a rancher to see a drastic change in earnings, he wouldn't see it in two months," says Manuel Garda Garza, president of the Union Ganadera Regional de Nuevo Leon cattle ranchers association. "The U.S. beef import suspension would have to last for two years."

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