December 12, 2005

Japan ends US, Canadian beef import ban

Japan has ended the Canadian and American beef import bans it imposed two years earlier due to mad cow disease.

Japan's health and agriculture ministries officially decided on Dec 12 to lift the ban on US and Canadian cattle younger than 21 months, as long as high-risk materials such as the spinal cords and heads had been removed.

Beef from younger animals could even begin to enter the country by year-end.

Japan's independent Food Safety Commission had earlier recommended an easing of the ban on US cattle as it concluded that the risk from US beef was nearly as low as that from home-grown animals.

Japan first banned imports of Canadian beef and beef products in May 2003 after the country's first case of mad cow case in Alberta, while the US beef ban followed in December, after a diseased animal was found in Washington state.

Before that, Japan was US's top beef export market, purchasing about US$1 billion worth of US beef products each year, while Canada had exported 20,000 tonnes, or US$150-million worth, to Japan annually.

However, polls conducted by a Japanese newspaper last week showed that a significant 75.2 percent of Japanese are unlikely to start eating US beef again any time soon.