September 27, 2010

South Korea, Canada resume beef trade talks

South Korea and Canada will continue negotiations on whether to ease Seoul's regulation on Canadian beef imports this week, the government said last Friday (Sep 24).

According to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the talks will be held in Ottawa from Monday to Wednesday, during which the two sides will hold thorough dialogue on the regulation that the South Korean government has been placing on beef imports from Canada since May 2003.

Although the ministry earlier said that it may, at least partly, get rid of the ban, it will do so only after they devise strong and proper safeguard measures.

South Korea banned the import of Canadian beef in May 2003 following an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in Canada. The country has so far reported 17 cases of the disease with the latest one announced this February.

Canada, on the other hand, has demanded South Korea to reopen its market to Canadian beef after receiving a controlled risk status from the World Organisation for Animal Health in 2007.

Although the two countries held two rounds of negotiations on the issue, they failed to narrow differences, which brought Canada before a dispute settlement panel of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) last year.