ABARES has retracted statements made earlier this week claiming that US fresh (chilled or frozen) beef has already started arriving in Australia.

Beef Central published this item yesterday drawing attention to the mistake, contained in both graphs and commentary in ABARES’ September Cattle & Beef Market Outlook report.

ABARES provided Beef Central with this statement this afternoon:

ABARES appreciates this issue being brought to its attention.

ABARES and the ABS have identified a reporting error in the source customs records in August and October 2024, which incorrectly recorded returning Australian beef (re-imports) from the United States as being of ‘US Origin’.

Revisions have now been made to the ABARES September 2025 Agricultural Commodities report’s Beef and Cattle note.

Since Beef Central’s report yesterday, the ABARES website now carries an alert that revisions have been made to the Beef & Cattle chapter of the original report (see image below).

The ABARES graphs plotting beef imports – fresh (chilled or frozen) have now also been amended to remove the mistaken references to US beef imports (see revised image below).

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has also offered the following response to the mistake this afternoon:

Following concerns raised in the article “ABARES, ABS get it wrong on first US beef imports to Australia”, ABS and ABARES have identified a reporting error in the source customs records in August and October 2024. This error incorrectly recorded returning Australian beef from the United States (re-imports) as being of ‘US Origin’. The ABS has no information on why the Australia beef was re-imported. 

The ABS compiles its international merchandise trade statistics from the import and export customs declarations submitted to the Australian Border Force (ABF). Customs declarations​ are provided to the ABF by importers, exporters, shipping companies, airlines, freight forwarders, or agents on behalf of these businesses.

ABS processes, edits and quality assures the data for the primary purpose of creating economic statistics, focusing on large value declarations. For this reason, detailed ABS international merchandise trade statistics on specific commodities are largely as reported on customs declarations. Care should be taken in the use and interpretation of detailed estimates. Further information on the ABS’ International Merchandise Trade data collection can be found here: International Merchandise Trade, Australia: Concepts, Sources and Methods, 2018 | Australian Bureau of Statistics

The claims in the original version of the report of US beef imports sparked inquiries from Sky News and other metropolitan media sources to Beef Central, which took the ABARES claims as fact.

The original article has attracted a number of reader comments.