A deal worth US$8 million was signed in Chuangchun Friday between a United Arab Emirates (UAE) company and a local beef exporter, showing the ever-increasing popularity of Chinese beef and mutton in Muslim countries.

According to the deal, the Changchun-based Haoyue Group, currently China's largest beef exporter which holds one third of the country's overall beef exports, will supply about 4,000 tons of beef to the Yousuf Ramadan EST for Meat & Food Stuff company over the next six months.

"We have built mutual confidence with Haoyue and we hope our cooperation will continue," said Abdallah Ja'Bari, manager of the UAE company.

Friday was the opening day of the first China Islamic-style Poultry and Meat Products Fair held in this capital city of northeast China's Jilin province, but the Haoyue Group had already grabbed export contracts worth some US$30 million , mostly from the Middle East.

Chinese meat products have quality guarantee and cattle slaughtering strictly follows the doctrines of Islam, such as the cattle must be slaughtered by an Imam and their heads must be toward the west, said Cong Lianbiao, board director of the Haoyue Group.

"Fifteen percent of Haoyue's employees, including me, are Muslims," said Cong.

The company spent over 30 million RMB yuan (US$3.7 million) building a mosque in the company compound, just to make it convenient for its Muslim employees and clients to get to a mosque to pray, he added.

According to Deng Fujiang, deputy chairman of the China Meat Producers' Association, many countries in recent years have increased meat imports from China because of the outbreak of the mad cow and foot and mouth diseases and dioxin contamination in Europe.

So far no case of mad cow disease or dioxin contamination has been found in China, Deng noted.

(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2002)