Utopia is one of Australia's best Angus bulls: jet black, muscular, he sires big, fast-growing cattle with superb meat quality. On a recent morning at the Total Livestock Genetics facility in Camperdown, two hours west of Melbourne, Utopia mounts a cow and is directed by a handler into a receptacle. The high-value semen is divided into hundreds of plastic straws, each containing millions of sperm cells, enough for an impregnation. Frozen in liquid nitrogen, the straws will be shipped to China, which is back in the bull semen market after a near halt in its cattle genetics trade that blocked imports from top sources including the US, Europe, Canada and Australia and rattled local suppliers enough to birth a market for smuggled sperm and livestock.
Now, Australian and Canadian suppliers are ramping up shipments and the United States and Britain could be approved soon, people in the industry say, as China tries to upgrade its scrawny, unproductive herds, raise beef output and dairy profitability, and cut a rising import bill.
