Canadian Cattle Association: A year-end update

At the time of writing this message, U.S. trade is a very volatile situation. Rather than dive into that and risk it being out of date by the time you read this, I wanted to touch on more durable subjects.

Rest assured that we are doing all we can on the U.S. market access front, although we are not able to highlight specific meetings or share details about the conversations here.

On October 21, legislation was tabled to welcome the United Kingdom into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Due to non-tariff trade barriers, the UK market remains inaccessible to Canadian beef while imports of UK beef into Canada have continued to increase. The situation has become even more unfair to Canadian beef producers as the value of UK beef imports into Canada rose from $16.6 million in 2023 to $42.5 million in 2024—a 156 per cent year-over-year increase. From January to August 2025, imports totalled $32.2 million, up 19 per cent from the same period in 2024.

CCA held a rare press conference on October 23 and called on the Canadian Government to terminate the Continuity Agreement for failing to meet its commitments. As the UK walked away from bilateral negotiations, we called on the Government of Canada to end the trade continuity agreement and ensure bilateral negotiations can begin again, so that barriers affecting Canadian beef can be properly addressed.

This is an extremely disappointing position to be in near the end of a year that has been fraught with trade uncertainties and geopolitical challenges. Fortunately, there have been some recent successes that we can be grateful for.

CCA celebrated along with the rest of Canada when Costco Mexico welcomed Alberta beef. 

The JBS plant in Brooks will ship 20,000 tonnes of beef to 41 Costco stores across Mexico. The announcement was made during a Canadian agricultural mission to Mexico. An announcement was also made that Mexico will lift its 18-month ban on Canadian pet foods made with bovine meal, reopening a market worth more than $400 million annually. Both Jennifer Babcock and I were privileged to participate in a Canada-Mexico agribusiness roundtable to discuss the importance of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) and working together as an industry in the lead-up to the review.

If you have questions about CCA’s advocacy efforts or specific challenges, we encourage you to reach out to us at contact@cattle.ca or (403) 275-8558. We welcome your questions and feedback. We also encourage you to read the ABP 2025 annual report, as we have highlighted some of the joint initiatives that CCA and ABP worked together on over the year.

Among the many publications supporting CCA’s work, Canadian Cattlemen magazine generously offers a platform to share information. Over the last few months, we have used that space to provide a more in-depth look at how advocacy works and how decisions are made. If you are interested in learning more about the work CCA does, I encourage you to seek out these articles. You can find them online at canadiancattlemen.ca/contributor/tyler-fulton.

On behalf of all of the elected member representatives and staff of the Canadian Cattle Association, we wish you a merry Christmas and a healthy, prosperous and happy new year.

This was first published in Volume 5 Issue 4 of ABP Magazine (Winter 2025). Watch for more digital content from the magazine on ABP Daily.