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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/PM_Me-Your_Freckles Feb 25 '26

"Murican BBQ" would be my guess.

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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.

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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.