US Beef Opportunities in Middle East

Gulfood 2017 is a food trade show held in Dubai, that has developed into one the premier food exhibitions in the world, attracting buyers from a wide range of countries. U.S. Meat Export Federation Senior Vice President of Marketing Dan Halstorm was there and shares

Halstrom: "U.S. beef is a niche in this region — a high-end, high quality niche — especially focused on the food service sector. If you take the family-style diner sector for example with burgers and a lot of chucks and briskets going into ground beef production for burgers. This is a good example of a segment where we become much more competitive and we're seeing share expand. Not only in Emirates where this show was held but countries such as Oman, Kuwait, Buhrain."

Halstorm says at the show there were inquires from Saudi buyers as recently U.S. beef regained eligibility there after a 2012 lock out due to a BSE-related ban. Although there are still some obstacles remaining.

Halstrom: "A lot of discussion around Saudi Arabia, we were last in that market four years ago and it was a $31 million market. With a population of excess of 29 million people, Saudi relatively wealthy people there is definitely a demand for U.S. beef so in that regard there was a lot of optimism. The downside of it is there hasn't been a lot of plants approved to export to Saudi yet. That is in process. The conditions that we reopen under are a little bit tight in terms of plants that can qualify but we are optimistic that we can work through that and see some volume go into Saudi in 2017."