January 16, 2004

USDA Lead High-Level Mad Cow Delegation To Japan

High-level officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration will travel to Tokyo next week for further talks. The U.S. delegation will hope to convince Japan to lift the ban on U.S. beef imports following the mad cow disease incident.

USDA Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agriculture Services J.B. Penn, and David Hegwood, special trade counselor for USDA Secretary Ann Veneman, will travel with FDA Deputy Commissioner Lester Crawford and others to Japan "sometime next week," USDA spokeswoman Julie Quick said.

A government official with Japan's embassy here said the visit by U.S. officials is in response to a recent telephone conversation between Veneman and Japanese Agriculture Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei.

The Japanese primarily needs to have the U.S. officials convince them that U.S. beef is safe in order to maintain the "confidence of consumers," the embassy official said.

Japanese Trade Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, speaking to reporters after meeting Veneman on Jan. 7, said Japan will take it slowly when it comes to the process of lifting the country's ban on U.S. beef in order to protect consumer confidence in beef.

Japan, before it enacted the ban, was the largest market for U.S. beef exports.

USDA's Quick said Veneman and Kamei pledged to "work to open the (beef) markets as quickly as possible."