August 15, 2008

A box of banned beef has been discovered in a shipment of pig bones imported from Sweden despite Japan imposing a ban on EU beef imports since 2001 due to mad cow disease (BSE) concerns, according to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry on Thursday (August 14, 2008).

The ministry has provisionally barred Swedish food processing company Scan AB and warehouse company Skara Frys AB, which stored the beef before shipping it to Japan. A Japanese warehouse firm handling the container shipment of 24 tonnes of pig bones, discovered a box of filet beef as well as a box of thigh pork, and reported it to quarantine authorities.

The ministry has requested Sweden to launch an investigation on how the 8 kg of filet beef came to be included in a container shipment of 24 tonnes of pig bones, which are processed in Japan to produce items such as broth and fertilisers.

The ministry said the inclusion may have been the result of a mistake during the shipment preparation process. It was also ensured that the filet beef did not enter the Japanese retail market.

Sweden is now the second country from which banned beef was imported and found in Japan amid mad cow disease concerns.

The World Organisation for Animal Health has classified Sweden as a country posing a negligible BSE risk.