December 11, 2007

 

Japan insists on age restrictions for US beef imports

 

 

Japan has refused to budge on its insistence that it would allow US beef imports if it came from cattle less than 20 months or younger.

 

Japan's Vice Farm Minister Toshiro Shirasu said on Monday (December 11, 2007) that Japan would not lift age limits despite calls from the US to do so, at least not immediately.

 

The beef trade issue was one of the pressing topics at a  subcabinet-level meeting between agricultural officials from the US and Japan that took place in Tokyo last week. 

 

The US has been demanding that Japan and South Korea lift all age restrictions after the e World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in May, pronounced US cattle at lower risk from mad cow disease.

 

Shirasu said although the government acknowledged that 30 months was the standard introduced in many countries as the guideline for importing US beef, this did not mean an official proposal by Tokyo that it would follow suit. 

 

Young cattle are believed to be at a lower risk of mad cow disease. Mad cow disease led Japan, once the top customer for US beef to ban all imports when the first case occurred there in 2003. The rules were relaxed last year with age and other restrictions imposed. US authorities have been working to remove those restrictions.

 

Shirasu said the government must first ask the nation's Food Safety Commission, an independent body of experts, to study the risks and make a policy recommendation, stressing that the government did not have any immediate plans to propose to the Commission to relax the age limit of US cattle.

 

He said that both Japan and the United States have to finalise a joint report on U.S. beef safety standards first before moving on to the next step on reviewing the age.

 

The announcement runs counter to Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura's announcement on Friday that Japan was moving towards the direction of relaxing current restraints.

 

Machimur had added then that Japan was trying to raise the issue of relaxing rules to 30 months.