The United States Department of Agriculture announced on Tuesday that China has banned six U.S. processing plants and six cold storage facilities that use meat-leaning feeds from exporting pork to the country.

A third-party company is now employed by China to conduct testing on pork imported by the country to verify that it does not contain the additive ractopamine, which stimulates lean muscle growth.

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Tyson Food plants in Iowa and Indiana are among those that were banned from exporting its products to China.

Other processing plants that were included in the ban are Nebraska's Hormel Foods Corp. plant, Triumph Foods in St. Joseph, Missouri and Austin, Minnesota's Quality Pork Processors, Inc.

In the report released by the Global Trade Atlas, the U.S. exported pork to China in 2013 totalling 312,138 tons, amounting to US$645.3 million.  

The total worldwide pork exports in 2013 were 7.5 million tons, which amounted to US$20.4 billion.

"China is by far the world's largest pork producer and consumer," U.S. Meat Export Federation spokesman Joe Schuele said.

The spokesperson said that it would be difficult to forecast how banning several food plants will affect China's imports from the United States.

During the previous week, in retaliation to the sanction imposed by western countries to Russia, the country banned all exports coming from the West for a year.

A WH Group subsidiary, Smithfield Foods, was the only pork exporter exempted from Russia's ban.

Doane Advisory Services economist Dan Vaught said that despite the cut from China, the pork export sales can be offset by U.S. demands and sales from other buyers.

Tagsmeat ban, pork ban