DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- China has become the last nation to lift its ban on U.S. pork as fears about swine flu ease.
Nick Giordano of the Washington D.C.-based National Pork Producers Council says final details of a trade agreement are being worked out and the world's largest consumer of pork could begin accepting shipments within two weeks.
That's good news for U.S. pork farmers who were hit with a triple whammy of high feed costs, a drop in demand at home with the recession and import bans by more than two dozen countries worried about transmission of swine flu.
Still, some farmers and economists say the repeal of China's ban won't make that much of a difference because China still produces most of the pork it consumes and had been scaling back imports even before swine flu hit.