October 26, 2004

Taiwan Mulls Lifting US Beef Import Ban

Taiwanese officials are considering lifting a beef ban imposed last year after a case of mad cow disease was found in US Washington.

Taiwan will determine whether to resume US beef imports after inspecting slaughterhouses in the country as early as next month, a government official revealed.

Taiwan issued a seven-year ban on US beef imports and related products in last December, after a cow tested positive for mad cow disease in Washington State.

"If the US fully implements the new slaughtering procedure as it claimed previously, we may re-open the market at the end of the year at the earliest," Chen Lu-hung, director of the Department of Health's (DOH) Food Safety Bureau, said after meeting with a delegation of US officials led by US Department of Agriculture Undersecretary J.B. Penn yesterday morning.

During the meeting, Penn called on the Taiwanese government to lift the ban on US beef imports as soon as possible, Chen said.

Penn had just wrapped up a visit to Japan, the US' biggest overseas customer for beef, over the weekend. Japan agreed to conditionally lift the ban on US beef exports after having banned them for the last 10 months.

Before the ban, Taiwan was the US' sixth-largest overseas buyer of beef, while the US ranked third among countries Taiwan imports beef from. According to statistics from the Council of Agriculture, Taiwan imported 12,859.15 tons of beef valued at US$54.73 million last year from the US, or about 23 percent of all imported beef.

Due to the suspension, local meat merchants have increased beef imports from Australia and New Zealand. According to council statistics, Taiwan has imported a total of 41,946.11 tons of beef valued at US$146 billion from the two countries this year.