April 24, 2006

 

US set to audit beef plants that export beef to Japan

 

 

The US Department of Agriculture is planning to begin the next phase of the drawn-out process of re-opening the Japanese beef market by starting an audit next week of US beef-producing plants seeking to export to Japan, USDA officials said Friday (Apr 21).

 

The audit of the facilities is expected to take about two weeks at most. Once that step is complete, a report will be presented to Japan in hopes that the country will agree to send its own delegation to the US--another step that Japan has said will be necessary before trade resumes.

 

It has been about three months since Japan halted US beef imports after finding prohibited material in a single shipment. Since then, the US has promised to improve regulations at beef-producing plants so there will not be further violations. A USDA delegation was sent to Tokyo in March to explain those improvements.

 

There have been many exchanges between US and Japanese officials on the improvements since that March meeting in Tokyo, a USDA official said, but an agreement has now been reached, allowing the USDA audit to begin next week.

 

USDA Undersecretary Charles Lambert, who led the March delegation, told US Senators upon returning from Tokyo that the planned US audit is designed "with an eye to getting the Japanese technical people into the (US) plants to do follow-up verification audits and verify that, in fact, we have made the changes we said we would and re-establish trade".

 

Japanese and other US government officials confirmed that Japan will indeed demand to do its own audit of US plants that intend to export beef to Japan.

 

Japan will scrutinise the results of the USDA audit closely, and then the country is expected to send a delegation of its own auditors to examine the same US facilities, the Japanese and US officials said.

 

After both audits are complete, the next step will be a high-level policy meeting between the two countries to "decide where we go from there," a USDA official said.

 

USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said Thursday he will be sure to discuss the issue if he gets a chance to talk with Japanese Agriculture Minister Shoichi Nakagawa during a future World Trade Organization ministerial meeting, possibly as early as next month.

 

It was in January that a USDA inspector, unaware of details of the US-Japanese beef trade agreement, signed off on a shipment of veal that was documented as containing prohibited vertebral column.

 

On Jan 20, Japan stopped imports of US beef because of the improper shipment. The trade halt came about a month after Japan eased a two-year beef ban since the US announced its first discovery of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease.

 

In Dec 2005, the US agreed to ship to Japan only beef from cattle slaughtered before reaching 21 months old and only after all material the Japanese said is risky for BSE infection, including vertebral column, was removed.