China agreeing this week to immediately allow bone-in Canadian beef from Cattle under 30 months of age.

John Masswohl is the Director of Government and International Relations with the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.

He says China closed its borders with the discovery of BSE in May of 2003 but has been re-opening it in stages. "The first shipment in 2012 did $4.7million. In 2013 we did $27 million, 2014 - $40 million. Last year we did $256 million because markets were closed in Korea and Taiwan and the dollar was fairly weak last year. China stepped in and took the product that might have gone other places. This year we're on track for about $40 million," he said.

Masswohl says he doesn’t expect big numbers from China for this year, adding we are on track for about 40 million dollars, possibly 50 million now with bone-in access for this year.

"We think adding the bone-in access is worth about $10 million in additional exports. We need all of these options open to us. The amount China can consume and want to import is going to be huge in the future," he said.

China closed its borders to Canadian beef in May of 2003, when we found our first case of BSE, and has been re-opening it in stages.

He notes there’s tremendous growth potential for Canadian Beef into China in the future.