The Chinese ban on Canadian beef – which was expect to last just a few months – is still in place almost a year and a half later.

The Chinese market is worth around $193m to Canadian beef farmers and industry representatives said they were at a loss to understand why the ban remained. It was put in place following an atypical case of BSE found on an Alberta farm in December, 2021.

The feeling at the time from Canadian officials was that the Chinese market would reopen quickly. The atypical BSE variant develops spontaneously in about one in every 1m head of cattle and unlike the classic BSE strain – which has been linked to the fatal neurological disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – poses no health risk to humans and is not transmissible.

At the same time, South Korea and the Philippines joined China in suspending beef imports from Canada, but both reopened their markets within two months.

“Most countries do not close when you find an atypical case,” said Dennis Laycraft, executive vice-president for the Canadian Cattle Association. “It’s just a few that did and you know, all those other countries opened up fairly quickly. So yeah, really the outlier here is China.”

China have a history of slamming shut import doors when atypical BSE cases are found. Both Brazil and Ireland also recently had their beef blocked by China due to cases, but resumed beef trade with both of those countries and in the case of Brazil trade was only shut for four weeks.

Mr Laycraft said he did not know what the sticking point was and didn’t believe there was a scientific explanation. He said: “We’re pretty confident all of the technical requirements and information that was needed has been provided, to allow the decision to reopen.”