December 11, 2006

Swift & Co. hopes to resume beef exports to Japan

Japanese government officials have been assessing a US government report recommending corrective measures that Swift & Company has proposed for its Greeley, Colorado plant after Japan returned a shipment from this plant for lack of proper documentation, an official said.

Sean McHugh, Swift spokesman said the company was waiting for a Japanese delegation to come to review the measures taken to prevent such an incident in future. He hopes to resume exports before the first of the year.

Corrective measures proposed by Swift include reprogramming scanning software to lock up the inventory scanning system when unauthorized product codes for shipments to Japan are identified.

Besides, the company also included measures like running products destined for Japan on a dedicated packaging line, and performing verification scans, manual audits and visual label verifications of shipments.