April 8, 2004

South Korea Set For Talks With US Over Resumption Of Beef Trade

A delegation of South Korean government officials will visit the U.S. soon for talks on bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary said Wednesday.
 
J.B. Penn, head of the Farm and Foreign Agriculture Services, told reporters that specifics on the meeting date and size of the delegation haven't been set.
 
"We're in discussions with them. We're trying to get a schedule as soon as we can," Penn said.
 
He also said that South Korea, unlike Japan, has not insisted USDA perform BSE tests on all of the cattle used to produce beef for export.
 
South Korea, traditionally the third-largest foreign market for U.S. beef, enacted a ban shortly after the U.S. announced it discovered a case of BSE on Dec. 23.
 
The U.S. exported 228,785 metric tons of beef to South Korea last year, worth about $751 million, according to USDA data compiled by the U.S. Meat Export Federation.