January 7, 2004

Japanese Beef Prices Soar On Back Of Import Ban

Domestic Japanese beef commanded high prices at the first auction of the year held Tuesday at the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, in the wake of an import ban slapped on American meat in late December following the discovery that month of the first case of mad cow disease in the U.S, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Tuesday evening edition.

Only 302 slaughtered cows were put up for auction, about 100 less than a year earlier, despite strong demand from supermarket operators and restaurant chains, a wholesaler said, according to the business daily.

One variety of domestic beef, which comes from cows that are crossbred from Holsteins and native Japanese stock, traded for Y1,281 a kilogram on average, up 71.5% from last year's first auction day.

Prices of high-end steak beef from Japanese cows remained high due to the lingering effects of a production cut following the outbreak of the disease, which is formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in Japan in 2001.