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By Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu
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BEIJING (Reuters) – China\\\’s meat importers fear clearing delays and a hit to demand after one of the country\\\’s major ports began requiring coronavirus tests for all meat and seafood containers to prevent contamination.
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Tianjin on the northern coast, the primary port for Beijing, started testing batches from every arriving container on Monday, two importers and an official briefed on the matter said.
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Tianjin port and customs officials did not respond to calls seeking comments.
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China is the world\\\’s top meat importer and many meat exporting nations, including the United States and Brazil, have seen thousands of cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, among meat plant workers.
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Authorities usually conduct food safety tests on a random sample of about 10% of frozen meat shipments, Grace Gao, manager at Dalian-based meat importer Goldrich International, said.
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Now, every container is opened and boxes pulled out for coronavirus tests, she said.
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The move by Tianjin, 110 km (70 miles) from Beijing, follows a fresh coronavirus outbreak linked to a wholesale food market.
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“Each batch of beef, or all beef produced on the same date,\\xc2\\xa0must be tested for the virus,” a manager at Haiyunda Trading, who only gave his surname Fu, said.
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Any meat in cold storage that arrived after March 1 must also be sealed and tested before it can leave the port, Fu said.
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Gao, who has shipments arriving this week in Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shanghai, is worried the tests will cause a backlog, particularly given the large volume of pork that has arrived in China in recent weeks.
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The United States Meat Export Federation said so far it had seen minimal disruption of U.S. shipments.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was aware China would begin testing seafood and meat, spokesman Peter Cassell told Reuters.
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But he said the regulator did not know of any cases of COVID-19 linked to these foods or of any transmission from food or packaging.
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“The FDA is not currently aware of any evidence to suggest that food produced in the United States or imported from countries affected by COVID-19 can transmit this respiratory virus,” he said.
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Two customs brokers in Shanghai said on Tuesday the city\\\’s port, which also handles large volumes of food imports, had not implemented new tests.
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Importers fear other ports may follow Tianjin and Gao said any positive test would destroy consumer demand.
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Fu said he was trying to import from regions and countries where COVID-19 is less severe, such as northern Europe and Kazakhstan.
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“If test results for products from certain countries or factories turn out to be problematic, imports from those places could be suspended,” he said.
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(Reporting by Dominique Patton, Hallie Gu, Muyu Xu, and Yawen Chen; Additional reporting by Tom Polansek and PJ Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Tom Hogue and Barbara Lewis)
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