At the U.S. Meat Export Federation’s annual strategic planning conference, the organization elected Jay Theiler as the new chair. 

The executive vice president for corporate affairs for Agri Beef Company in Boise, Idaho, says his priorities in the coming year won’t deviate from the great groundwork laid by USMEF.

“We’re going to need to continue to differentiate our product. We are the gold standard for products when you talk about beef, pork, and lamb around the world. This product is highly sought after. USMEF is really great at marketing, and so making sure that we continue to market the differentiation, and really focus on what makes these products so good and continue to drive demand is really going to be one of the key focuses.”

Theiler noted another priority is defending the markets built over the years.

“These are markets like Japan, Korea, Mexico, where we’ve had long-standing partnerships, where the business has been very developed. There may be some questions about our reliability as a supplier with a lot of political things going on, and we want to make sure that those customers that we’ve worked with for years and years know how important they are to us and how important those relationships are to us and our business.”

Theiler added that another area of focus is diversity, not just for the short term, but for the next five decades as well.

He added that while the Chinese market can’t be replaced, USMEF can build future business in markets that are now developing, including places like the African continent, South America, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.