U.S. red meat promoted at SIAL Paris

The U.S. Meat Export Federation recently hosted a pavilion at SIAL Paris, one of the world's largest food trade shows. As USMEF President and CEO Dan Halstrom, explains, the event put U.S. beef, pork and lamb exporters in front of buyers from more than 200 countries.

"It's definitely a global show. Now, as far as U.S. beef products and pork products - there's probably a few regions that we're more interested in than others. The obvious one being the EU, especially for the beef side," Halstrom says. "A lot of players that were there from the EU. Africa had a large contingent from a lot of different regions of Africa, and really the Middle East, of course, all over the Middle East, and of course, Asia. Asia was represented, not as strong as those other ones, but really it is a global show for people from all over the world.

"The U.S. beef into Europe was probably the main topic for the show. We had all the major players that are either exhibiting with us or were working out of our pavilion, both importers and exporters. And as we all know, a little bit supply constrained at the moment, especially as we look forward into 2025 but I think the enthusiasm was still strong for U.S. beef, despite that. And not everyone is reducing. There's several importers that were increasing their volumes, which a good sign as well."

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Recent constriction in EU pork production is opening the door for U.S. market share.

"We're still seeing expansion in Spain, but the rest of Europe has definitely been on a downtrend versus three to four years ago. So yes, this opens up opportunities, not only to some of the places in the world where they had a high market share, I think about places like the Philippines, for example, which had a very high EU pork share. We're seeing a shift there," Halstrom says. "China, another example of massively reduced market share. Japan, reduced market share. So yes, we have to follow very closely what's going on from a competition standpoint out of the EU."

USMEF's participation in SIAL was made possible through support from USDA's Regional Agricultural Promotion Program.