China's Access to U.S. Markets

Friday Jan 21st, 2011 107 Views Fruit Grower Report

China’s Access to U.S. Markets. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

A recent article in an industry magazine talked about the possibility of Chinese apples coming to the U.S. marketplace and according to Todd Fryhover, President of the Washington Apple Commission it is a really complicated issue.

FRYHOVER: The U.S. government has been stalling for about 12 years on China’s access to U.S. markets. Apples is basically their number one agricultural commodity that they want to ship into the U.S. market. Obviously. Recently APHIS decided to move ahead on the process of discussing China access to the U.S. market.

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) needed to provide China with a pest risk assessment.

FRYHOVER: And in fact they did. They provided China with a list of invasive pests that they would have to find a mitigation measure for in order to gain access to the U.S. market. So what they now have is they have a path to follow.

So theoretically all China has to do is follow the steps.

FRYHOVER: And once that process is completed there is a timeline in place or a supposed timeline in place that will allow access for Chinese markets to the U.S. Now that being said, nobody with any credibility can put an exact timeline on this.