Evaluation of Food Safety Measures of African Countries' Trading Partners on Conventional and Organic Beef Exports

Abstract

The average annual value of African beef exports was approximately 16 million dollars in the period 2000-2009. The annual African beef export outputs increased haphazardly leading to a low single digit average annual growth rate of 3.64% in the period. A major contributor to this was attributed to market access restrictions caused by stringent food safety measures imposed by the European Union trading partner and other African beef exports major trading partners. Descriptive statistics was utilized to analyze time series data of notications by hazard categories of beef export consignments obtained from annual reports of the European Union rapid alert system for food and feed for the period 2005-2009. The result showed an average annual market access restriction of 154 beef export consignments in the EU export market in the given period. The following hazards were observed to have contributed about 70% to the market access restrictions:
potential pathogenic microorganisms (49.47% ), bad odours (5.72% ), organoleptic changes (4.94%), veterinary residues (4.57%), food additives (2.15%), heavy metals (1.8%), microbiological organisms (1.76%), foreign bodies (1.58%), packaging (3.08%) and parasites (1.57%). In order to create sustainable growth of African beef exports, Government of African countries should promote export of competitive value added beef products should to export markets of major trading partners.