China's temporary embargo on beef tripe shipments entering through the port of Hong Kong has forced Uruguay to send a trade team to assuage Chinese concerns about imported meat. Shipments ground to a halt after Chinese sanitation officials complained that some meat cuts arriving via Hong Kong bear labels that misrepresent their freshness and quality. Prior to the Uruguayan team's departure, sanitation officials scrambled to upgrade controls on all meat cuts destined for export. The Chinese import restrictions are particularly painful to suppliers of omasum, a section of animal stomachs for which China is the only viable foreign market and domestic demand is negligible. Meat processing plants are redirecting tripe to the domestic market, but they are stockpiling and freezing omasum in hopes of quickly regaining access to the Chinese market. However, plant managers are growing restless, because processing, packaging and freezing omasum is a relatively expensive process they cannot sustain without export sales.
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