September 17, 2010

US-Japan beef talks inconclusive

The US made no specific request for relaxing Japan's beef import restrictions over mad cow disease at a two-day bilateral working-level meeting that ended on Wednesday (Sep 15), Japanese officials said.

Japanese and US officials explained their respective tests and safety measures for preventing the disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, at the meeting, which was the first one in three years to deal with the relaxation of the Japanese beef import curbs, the officials said.

Japan has restricted beef imports from the US since its first case of the disease was discovered in 2003.

The two countries had suspended their beef trade talks in August 2007 due to their wide difference over how to relax the Japanese import restrictions.

In April, however, then Japanese agriculture minister Hirotaka Akamatsu and his US counterpart Tom Vilsack agreed to resume such talks at a meeting in Tokyo.

At the just-ended meeting, the two sides agreed to meet again, though they fell short of fixing a specific schedule for the next meeting, the officials said.