SEOUL - South Korea will send experts to the United States next week to follow up the detection of O-157:H7 E.coli bacteria in a U.S. beef shipment last month, the Agriculture Ministry said on Thursday.
In a report prepared for a regular parliamentary inspection, the ministry said it would send the team from October 22 to 30 to visit the U.S. Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Food and Drug Administration and a slaughterhouse owned by IBP Inc in Dakota City, Nebraska.
It said the team would also visit the feed-milling plants and the breeding farms that supply the IBP plant, which exported contaminated beef to South Korea.
It said the four-person team would have representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the National Livestock Quarantine Service, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and academia.
U.S. experts visited South Korea last week and said they were satisfied with the methods Seoul had used to detect the bacteria.
Earlier on Thursday the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association said the U.S. beef industry would create a food safety task force aimed at reducing the E.coli bacteria in beef production. The task force's creation followed two recent recalls of boneless beef because of possible contamination by the bacteria.
The largest meat recall in history occurred in August when 11,300 tonnes (25 million lbs) of boneless beef produced at Hudson Foods Co's Columbus, Neb., plant was recalled. Soon after, 181 tonnes (400,000 lbs) of beef produced by the Beef America Inc plant in Norfolk, Neb., were recalled. Both recalls were related to suspected E.coli contamination.
On September 26, the ministry announced it had detected the fatal bacteria in 18.1 tonnes (40,000 lbs) of beef shipped from the IBP plant.
The bacterium is an especially virulent form of E.coli that can cause kidney failure and death.
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