Beef Shipments Potentially Resumed in Japan

It looks like the mad cow disease panic in Japan is starting to wear off. On Friday, both Japanese and US officials announced that negotiations held in Tokyo this week, regarding measures to avoid further violations of a beef trade agreement between Japan and the US, were reached.

The basic provision of the agreement is the resume of US beef exports to Japan, that the latter restricted on January 20th this year, only a month after it partially lifted a two year old ban, due to several serious mad cow disease cases discovered in the US.

The new suspension was immediately imposed after American health inspectors did not perform a rigorous check-up to discover that a lot of the beef quantity US was exporting to Japan contained banned cattle parts, and this threw a shadow of doubt over the trustworthiness of the American system of ensuring safety of its products.

Thus, the Japanese government's approval of the USDA report, which envisions the re-auditing of a number of US beef packaging plants, is looked upon as a major step in the resumption of US beef exports, a sign that the American inspection system can be and actually is, reliable.

One of the Japanese farm ministry officials attending the three day negotiations with a US delegation from the Department of Agriculture, Hirofumi Kugita, confirmed the fact that Japan has accepted the US report as a proof that there are no more major problems with the inspection system.

Kugita added that the state would organize public meetings with the population of Japanese consumers and thus, get their opinions on the matter, before marching further on with the complete resumption of US exports.