February 20, 2006

USDA presents report on beef export violation to Japan

The US Department of Agriculture has presented a 475-page report to Japan containing two investigations into why a US company was allowed to ship ineligible beef products to Japan, USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said Friday Feb 17.

He said the report, containing investigations by USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and USDA's Inspector General, gave details on how the US government and company officials were both at fault for the trade violations by the US exporter.

Japan halted imports of US beef on Jan 20 after discovering ineligible beef products in a shipment of veal. The disruption came just a month after Japan eased a two-year ban on US beef - a ban that was put in place after bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, was first discovered in the US in December 2003.

"The report concludes that mistakes were made by the plants involved with the shipment and by USDA inspection personnel," Johanns said. "Those mistakes resulted from a lack of understanding of which products were eligible for shipment to Japan. The ineligible product included veal with the vertebral column intact and veal offal."

Johanns told reporters in a teleconference that he has submitted a list of 15 separate ways the US will prevent such violations from occurring again. Key among those is re-educating meat inspectors on specific export requirements for shipping to Japan.

Johanns said it will likely take time for Japan to thoroughly evaluate the report, and the USDA secretary said he expects Japanese officials will likely propose additional trade certification requirements in the wake of these violations.

Japan will carefully examine the US report on a recent mistaken shipment of US beef, but has no plans to resume imports quickly, Japanese agriculture minister Shoichi Nakagawa said.

Meanwhile, Phil Seng, president of the US Meat Export Federation, said he is hopeful that Japan will resume purchasing US beef "soon," but would not offer a prediction of just when that might occur.