September 6, 2004

Japan Unready To Lift US Beef Ban

A U.S. delegation was expected earlier this summer to go to Tokyo in August and strike a deal to restart beef exports to Japan, but officials there remain unready to do so and are occupied with an internal analysis of mad-cow disease safety regulations, according to U.S. and Japanese government representatives.
 
That analysis, now being conducted by Japan's Food Safety Commission, must be completed before the government's Health Department can consider easing restrictions on U.S. beef, Masamichi Saigo, a communications official with the commission said.
 
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman has highlighted the importance of convincing Japan to ease its rule requiring all cattle be tested for mad-cow disease - something USDA officials have repeatedly refused to do - in order get U.S. beef flowing back into Japan.
 
But getting Japan to agree to make that change will "take some time," USDA Under Secretary J.B. Penn said in an Aug. 26 press conference, because Japan is "in the middle of the evaluations that they need to make before they do change their regulations."
 
And it is premature, Penn said, to even begin talking about a Japanese decision on an age level under which cattle do not need to be tested.
 
"I don't think the Japanese are nearly to the point of talking about ... specific age animals yet," Penn said.
 
Saigo agreed that much more needs to be done before that point is reached. If Japan's Health Department does eventually decide that not all cattle need to be tested and sets a new age level - something U.S. officials say is a must for trade to resume - that decision will then go back to the Food Safety Commission for further consultation, he said.
 
Lynn Heinze, spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said for an effective deal to be struck, Japan would have to agree that cattle under 30 months old pose no risk of carrying mad-cow disease.
 
Before Japan banned U.S. beef in December in response to a case of mad-cow disease discovered in a Washington state dairy cow, most of the U.S. cattle slaughtered for the Japanese beef market were between 18 and 22 months old, ages the Japanese unofficially consider safe from mad-cow disease, Heinze said.
 
"For the most part, the animals we are producing and consuming are already in what the Japanese consider a lower-risk group," Heinze said. "It's just difficult to prove it."