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 Post Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:31 pm 
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In a letter which can be found here, Obama's suggested that certain trade concessions previously extended to South African agricultural produce might be ending soon (around the end of the year).

Apparently, it's all about the health and safety standards of chicken, beef, and pork products being imported into South Africa, and the official word on this end is that it's all over minor technical quibbles that will get sorted out one way or another as soon as the veterinary experts have had their say. I know little more than that at present...

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 Post Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 6:35 pm 
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The US has had the same problems with other first world markets. Protectionism aside our food safety rules are somewhat lax by first world standards, and industrial meat production is both heavily subsidized and lightly regulated at the corporate level. This could easily lead to quibbles.

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 Post Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 10:45 pm 
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It seems to have started out as a quibble over [url=http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/11/09/how-we-got-to-the-agoa-cliff-edge]how much chicken South Africa would accept before charging anti-dumping fees[url] - America wanted 120 000 tonnes, South Africa was willing to accept 25 000 tonnes.

Eventually both sides agreed in principle to 65 000 tonnes (that's a lot of chicken) but the agreement hasn't been finalised and signed yet; the sticking points being "sanitary and phyto-sanitary" issues (apparently things like how to handle chicken being imported from one state while another state is suffering from highly contagious bird flu). And then South Africa missed an October 15 deadline to get this all sorted out. (The American government may be lax on food safety; the South African government tends to be slow to get things done).

The vets have until the end of the year to get things on paper and get the agreement signed. Let's see if it happens in time.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2016 2:30 pm 
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I haven't noticed anything in my local news about this; how did it (or did it) work out?

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 Post Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 5:58 am 
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The diplomatic restrictions were lifted in around March, without much fanfare. However, there may still be some lingering concerns about the quality of the imported meat, and there's a fairly major chicken-based restaurant chain that insists on only using local, non-frozen chicken.

Having said that, I had to go googling to find out the above; now that the treaty has been restored, it's no longer on the news here, either.

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