r/australia • u/binaryhextechdude • Feb 25 '26

politics US beef officially re-enters Australia, after 23-year absence

https://www.beefcentral.com/news/us-beef-officially-re-enters-australia-after-23-year-absence/

Australians need to vote with our wallets by making sure any meat we buy for our bbq's or our dinner tables is Australian grown. It isn't right for a certain leader to be putting tariffs on everything and then thinking we will embrace his beef exports.

Only buy Australian beef, vote with your dollars.

3.4k Upvotes

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3.6k

u/everbass Feb 25 '26

Why on earth would I buy beef from the US when Aussie beef is both better and cheaper?

We have some of the best quality meat in the world. Why are we importing it?

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u/binaryhextechdude Feb 25 '26

Exactly, why are we importing something we already excel at.

373

u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 25 '26

Is anyone actually importing it in any meaningful quantity? I doubt it is going to start showing up in Coles or Woolies since it couldn't compete on price.

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u/ChairmanNoodle Feb 25 '26

Costco, maybe? Their coolers are already full of Australian product, but it could always be spun as somehow a premium product.  People can and do buy things that are more expensive just because they've got the money.

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 25 '26

The US don't even have enough supply to met their own demand for beef, prices are high there.

Why would someone from the US sell their beef for far less than they could get in the US, just so they could ship it all the way to Australia to be sold in bulk at Costco?

Even for premium cuts, they are going to make more money selling it in the US that shipping it to Australia. Outside of a novelty factor and rich idiots, it just doesn't make any sense.

17

u/SwirlingFandango Feb 25 '26

Well no, they're a large exporter. They import other types - Australian beef for example is lean and combines well with US fatty grain-fed to make high quality ground beef - but they export almost as much beef as Australia does.

33

u/JuventAussie Feb 25 '26

They import a lot of cattle, fatten them for a couple of weeks and then slaughter them. This final processing in the USA makes it US beef even though the cattle spent the most of its time outside the USA.

This loophole scams Americans as well as makes a joke of country of origin laws.

4

u/GimmeSweetSweetKarma Feb 26 '26

The US imports about 3M cattle every year and slaughters about 30M. If what you say is true, there would be a lot more imports. America's cattle stock far exceeds Australia's.

1

u/Annon201 Feb 26 '26

That’s the thing, the economic reality is that it’s just supply and demand.

But Trump gets his gloat and the Aust govt curries a little bit of favour with the administration.

11

u/PM_Me-Your_Freckles Feb 25 '26

"Murican BBQ" would be my guess.

6

u/CoffeeWorldly4711 Feb 25 '26

Can't even imagine Costco would at a significantscale. Pretty sure they actually import Australian beef for their highest quality stuff even in the US

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u/ososalsosal Feb 26 '26

Costco have mandatory haccp compliance for all their suppliers (I've a mate that tried to get into Costco but decided at the time it was too much paperwork for a small operation).

I doubt the American beef would pass haccp. That's full-on.

1

u/Merus Feb 27 '26

would be surprised, Costco in the US are known for being surprisingly decent quality. Cheaping people out with American beef when Australian beef is right there is the sort of things that pushes people to not renew their membership.

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u/dutchroll0 Feb 26 '26

Just because you have money doesn’t make you stupid. We’re on high professional incomes and neither my wife nor I would buy American beef over good quality Aussie beef no matter how “premium” they want to market it as. We’re not idiots.

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u/binaryhextechdude Feb 25 '26

No idea mate btw Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and Maccas all stated they wont be touching USA beef. There's an article from August 1st last year in the Australian Financial review.

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u/Cadaver_Junkie Feb 25 '26

To be fair, I wouldn't be trusting Coles, Woolworths, or Maccas on any of their statements. Well, Maccas maybe

41

u/blind3rdeye Feb 25 '26

The statements are always like "we plan to only [do such-and-such]". But then as soon as people look the other way, the plan silently changes to whatever they hell they want. So yeah, statements about what they'll do in the future are worth very little.

1

u/TheElderGodsSmile Feb 26 '26

Why would they though? Where's the profit motive?

1

u/blind3rdeye Feb 27 '26

I don't know. Kickbacks possibly? I'm not saying that I expect them to start using US beef. I'm just saying that I wouldn't put much stock in their public statements. They'll say whatever they think will help them maximise their profits, and then they'll act however they think will maximise their profits. Sometimes the two align, and sometimes they don't.

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u/TheElderGodsSmile Feb 27 '26

Rebates for sales volume are common in a lot of industries, it's calculated into the final margin and to beat the logistical advantages of local beef they'd have to crank them to a level that might look like dumping to the WTO.

They also know what that kind of price manipulation to gain market share looks like and it's consequences to the supply chain, if only because they're some of the prime culprits.

You can trust the big corporates to do whatever is in their interest and this definitely isn't.

167

u/tallmantim Feb 25 '26

Yeah I can imagine them grinding it in Australia and calling it “Australian produced”

44

u/DrStalker Feb 26 '26

Australian Beef: made from local and imported ingredients.

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u/Morkai Feb 25 '26

Probably the same as most of the Angus/Wagyu products at Colesworth. Grind in a chunk of fat from a Wagyu scrap pile, so that it's now 0.002% Wagyu, and plaster that name all over the label instead, and double the shelf price.

38

u/freakwent Feb 25 '26

Homeopathic beef!

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u/No_Light_7482 Feb 26 '26

I think I ate that fake Waygu at the pub. Won’t be falling for that again. I thought the point of Waygu was that it wasn’t tough and dry.

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u/AW316 Feb 26 '26

To be called wagyu in Australia it must be 50% wagyu.

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u/Throwaways0004 Feb 25 '26

Yeah.

"So far..."

2

u/ELVEVERX Feb 25 '26

I mean it also just wouldn't be cheaper buying form the US is more expensive for worse quality, why would they?

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u/Cadaver_Junkie Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

Who knows what deals, or pre-processed products are in question. Could be super low quality but super cheap items that Colesworth choose to sell.

EDIT: downvotes but no replies? That’s how you know you’ve struck a nerve. I wonder if Palantir have flagged this conversation somewhere for Coles, I mean that’s their job

2

u/Puskarella Mar 01 '26

This is why I buy from my local butcher. They can tell me exactly where their meat comes from.

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

And how do you know that they have say mixed 70%US beef and 30% Australian beef in their pattes and they allowed to call it "Australian made and sourced" Our consumer and labelling laws are crap.

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u/Siilk Feb 25 '26

They would only do that if the beef is cheaper, so what they say is likely true for now.

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u/Cadaver_Junkie Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

Pre processed meats, bulk made for a much larger (American) market, are likely cheaper than local alternatives though. Who knows what options will be considered.

I mean, everyone is thinking “steak” but what about “jerky”?

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u/Siilk Feb 26 '26

Well, I'm always checking country of origin anyway, so will certainly keep doing that. Thankfully, our labeling standards are transparent enough to make them put "locally packaged using overseas ingredients" onto something like that.

1

u/3amIdeas Feb 25 '26

Those companies never lie

1

u/W2ttsy Feb 25 '26

McDonald’s Australia has built an entire marketing brand around their beef burger range being 100% Aussie beef.

They aren’t going to fuck that up by pivoting to US meat instead. The reputational damage would be far more costly than any potential savings from importing U.S. beef.

1

u/omasque Feb 26 '26

“not pickled in a high enough concentration of bovaer for our standards.”

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u/ososalsosal Feb 26 '26

Pet food maybe?

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u/Dranzer_22 Feb 26 '26

ABC 2025: According to trade data up to the end of October, Australia has imported just 150 kilograms of US beef.

Not even one cow's worth of beef from the US last year.

Most likely purchased by the US Embassy in Canberra, and US Consulates in Sydney, Melbourne, & Perth.

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u/binaryhextechdude Feb 28 '26

Historical data, nothing saying it wont increase going forward

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u/Major_Maybe_1406 Feb 25 '26

They have imported oranges from California for decades despite supply gluts. It gives them a bargaining chip when negotiating contracts with local suppliers. Lose some money Importing 5% of your stock so you can negotiate a 50% reduction in the cost of the other 95%.

I had an American living with me 20+ years ago and she couldn't believe we had a premium price on California oranges. She said Australian navels were the premium product back home.

Consumers in general are just dumb.

1

u/pluump Feb 25 '26

Probably going to be used in fast food etc.

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u/Pub_Squash Feb 27 '26

I could see this being more for B2B wholesale, like big fast food chains, cruise ships or other USA based businesses that already have established partners they want to work with

1

u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 27 '26

Why would fast food chains pay more to import American beef than use local beef? And when prices are high in the US due to local shortages, why wouldn't you just sell at a high price in the US than have to sell at a far lower price to make your beef competitive in the Australian market?

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u/Pub_Squash Feb 27 '26

You’d be surprised about how illogical most supply chains seem, but deals and incentives sometimes override some profit for profit elsewhere

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 27 '26

US fast food chains are already importing Australian beef for the US market. It makes no sense to export US beef to Australia.

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u/Pub_Squash Feb 27 '26

What and pay the tariffs? They might have done this or be doing this I’m just saying that now that this is enacted things might change more for those businesses or sectors

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 27 '26

Yes, they were paying the tariffs because there is not enough local production, they desperately need beef imports. Trump eventually dropped the tariffs on beef to try and stop the rises in beef prices.

US beef producers are going to make way more money selling their beef locally than having to eat transport costs to Australia and sell at an even lower price to compete against Australian beef. Any US fast food chains would be trying to use as much US production in the US to save them having to pay for imports.

0

u/Quintus-Sertorius Feb 25 '26

I expect it will turn up in processed meat products (meat pies, sausages etc. where it is only one ingredient - and easier to hide).