April 9, 2012

Japan lifts US firm's beef imports suspension

As measures have been confirmed to avoid  the company not abiding with a bilateral beef trade accord aimed at protecting against mad cow disease, Japan has lifted a suspension on beef imports from a US meat processing company, the Japanese farm and health ministries said Friday (Apr 6).

In February 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare suspended imports of beef from Greater Omaha Packing Co. in Nebraska as the Animal Quarantine Service could not verify if the large intestines among a meat shipment from the company came, as required, from cattle 20 months old or younger.

A report presented to the Japanese government by the USDA on March 15 attributed the problem to workers at the processing plant failing to carry out necessary inspections when mixing up shipments bound for the US market with shipments destined for export to Japan, the two ministries said.

The report noted that Greater Omaha Packing will take measures to prevent a similar problem, such as attaching an identification label to each box bound for Japan.

The large intestines weighed 760 kilogrammes and were among 2.1 tonnes of frozen beef shipped from the Nebraska company.