June 15, 2009                                           

Though Canada has yet to decide on take South Korea's ban to the dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organization (WTO), it can be able to do so now, an official here said Friday (June 12).

Ottawa filed a petition with the WTO against Seoul's 2003 import ban in April. As the WTO's mandatory 60-day negotiation period passed on Monday (June 8) with no bilateral agreement being reached, Canada could ask for the establishment of a dispute settlement panel.

The anonymous official at the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said after talks with Canada's International Trade Vice-Minister Louis Levesque earlier in the day, Ottawa is still weighing its options on this matter.

The panel would have the authority to call on Seoul to lift the ban or allow Canada to take punitive actions against South Korean products.

South Korea has consistently said that the outstanding disagreement on the beef import ban should be settled through bilateral negotiations.

Seoul banned all beef imports from Canada in May 2003 after the North American country confirmed its first case of mad cow disease. Canada has since confirmed a total of 16 cases of the brain wasting disease that is suspected of causing the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

Ottawa has claimed that it has secured the "controlled risk" classification from the Paris-Based World Organization for Animal Health that technically allows it to export beef without restrictions.