WASHINGTON - U.S. Agriculture Department said Friday it does not expect South Korea to ban imports of Nebraskan beef in response to an alledgedly contaminated cargo.
On Thursday, officials at American Meat Institute told reporters that a South Korean meat purchasing agent had recommended a ban on beef from Nebraska because South Korean inspectors had found a potentially deadly bacteria in a shipment of 18 tonnes of beef from that state.
But based on the latest communications with the South Korean government, USDA does not expect any such ban, a department spokeswoman said.
Officials from USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and Foreign Agricultural Service will meet with officials in South Korea early next week to review the situation.
"Everybody's being very cooperative," the USDA spokeswoman said.
Earlier this week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman expressed frustration with South Korea's unwillingness to let U.S. officials review the testing procedure that South Korean inspectors used to discover E. coli O157:H7 in the 18 tonnes beef from an IBP Inc. plant in Dakota City, Nebraska.
Glickman said he assumed that South Korea was acting in good faith when it said it found the bacteria. But under international trading rules, the United States has the right to review the tests that were used, he said.
Some cattlemen have expressed fears that South Korea is using the E. coli incident to curb imports of U.S. beef, which had been on a record-setting pace.
Meanwhile, USDA is continuing to investigate a separate E. coli incident involving contaminated beef found at grocery store in southern Virginia.
In that case, the Beef America Co has already voluntarily recalled 200 pounds of ground beef produced at its plant in Norfolk, Nebraska.
With the memory of the recent massive Hudson Food Inc. hamburger recall fresh in the minds of live cattle future traders, prices at Chicago Mercantile Exchange slumped earlier this week on talk of an expanded Beef America recall.
The Hudson Food recall in August totaled 25 million lbs and was the largest in U.S. history.
It reached that level because Hudson had a practice at its Nebraska plant of cycling leftover ground beef into the next day's production - making possible a continuous chain of contamination.
A spokesman for Beef America said his company had followed a similar practice, but halted it after the Hudson Food recall. That could limit the size of any additional Beef America recall. However, USDA officials would not comment on that specific point.
Press Here for Info on Setting Your Own Web Site
Meat Industry Insights News Service
P.O. Box 553
Northport, NY 11768
Phone: 631-757-4010
Fax: 631-757-4060
E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com
Web Site: http://www.spcnetwork.com/mii