October 28, 2004

South Korea Resumes Mexican Beef Imports
 

South Korea has lifted an import ban on Mexican beef as the government confirmed beef products from the Latin American country do not contain beef from the United States.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) has decided to end the suspension of quarantine for the products from four of five abattoirs and beef processing plants in Mexico after on-site inspections.

Imports of Mexican beef have been banned in July as American beef were found contained in shipments from a meat processing plant in Mexico. Korea has suspended imports of American beef since last year, following reports of mad cow disease in Washington State.

"After the inspection, four of the five plants do not handle US beef, except one that shipped US beef products to South Korea in July," a MAF official said. "So we have decided to remove the ban for the four plants as it is not appropriate to ban all Mexican beef imports when the problem was caused not by the Mexican quarantine system but by one company."

The Mexican butchery that exported US beef in July was barred from exporting beef to South Korea.

Mexican beef imports began in January this year for the first time, due to a shortage in supply triggered by a South Korean ban on US beef. The US had been the nation's largest beef import source.

In the first three quarters, Mexican beef imports amounted to 262 tons, a small portion of total beef imports of 104,234 tons. However, it is the third largest importing source, following Australia (62,768 tons) and New Zealand (41,204 tons), with import beef bans from the US and Canada.