February 16, 2005

 

 

South Korea ups beef safety with chip technology

 

When a "Hanwoo" is born in South Korea, it has a name in numeral letters and a tiny chip implanted in its ear to record its date of birth, family and medical treatment over its life.

 

The new programme paid for by a group of retailers is designed to reassure South Korean consumers about the safety of their domestic yellow cows.

 

South Korea has never had a case of mad cow and, unlike Japan and Taiwan, is making few moves to reopen its market to North American beef -- despite pressure from the United States and from the country's own cost-conscious local restaurateurs.

 

With polls showing South Korean housewives are nervous about food supply, consumers can check information on certain cows by entering the number written on the meat package on a Web site.

 

"It helps when I choose beef," Choi Kyoung-hee, a 52-year-old housewife, said in a beef mart. "At least, I can check where the beef comes from as I am still concerned about mad cow in imported beef."

 

Sohn Young-gon, an official at tracechip.com, which provides resumes complete with pictures of domestic cows, said there was little chance the data on the beef could be tampered with.

 

"All are written and read by computers from birth to slaughter," he said, adding that computers at veterinary hospitals and located at slaughter houses can read the data contained in the cow's chip and update as necessary.

 

The agriculture ministry has also begun providing a similar service and said some 3 percent of almost 1.7 million home-bred cattle could be tracked by the end of this year and that all cows could be covered by 2009.

 

For imported beef, Seoul will begin a test trial by May of this year tracking imported meat by attaching electronic tags to track all imported beef.

 

South Korea consumed 332,000 tonnes of beef last year, with 60 percent of its supply coming from Australia and New Zealand. But imports slumped 55 percent in 2004 after the ban on US beef.

 

In May 2003, South Korea banned beef imports from Canada following cases of mad cow -- also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy. In December, Seoul banned US beef imports after a cow tested positive for the fatal animal brain-wasting illness that can be transferred to humans who eat contaminated meat.

 

Lotte, South Korea's biggest department store with more than a score of branches, saw beef sales fall 70-80 percent immediately after the US mad cow case. Domestic beef sales have gradually recovered but imported beef sales were still slow.

 

"The impact was huge. No single meat was sold right after the news was reported," Byung-soo Lee, an official at the store said.

 

Its total beef sales fell 30 percent last year from about 50 billion won ($48.40 million) in 2003, he said.

 

In an effort to regain consumer trust, Lotte and other stores have begun providing DNA tests to ensure the authenticity of Hanwoo.

 

"Orders for beef DNA test have piled up... we brought a new big fridge to store so many samples," said Myoah Baek, an official at Kogenebiotech Co. Ltd. "We often receive phone calls from beef consumers who wonder if we did the DNA tests."

 

With polls showing some 85 percent of consumers including housewives are worried about the food supply, they often opt for home-grown beef despite the fact that imported beef usually costs 40 percent less.

 

With demand returning for beef, Korean ranchers are expected to raise beef production as much as 11 percent to 1.84 million cattle this year, following a 12-percent rise last year.

 

But the country will still needs imports to fill the gap while the beef of Australian and New Zealand has limited appeal in South Korea.

 

"Consumers seem to prefer tastes of grain-fed US beef, compared with grass-fed beef in Australia and New Zealand," an official at the agriculture ministry said.