060127 Japan Unlikely to Resume US Beef Imports Soon

Tokyo - Japan looks unlikely to soon lift a ban on U.S. beef reimposed after just one month following the discovery in a shipment from New York of animal parts that experts consider to be most at risk of spreading mad cow disease.

A U.S. delegation led by Agriculture Undersecretary J.B. Penn discussed the ban with Japanese authorities in Tokyo on Tuesday and Wednesday but failed to allay concerns about the reliability of the U.S. food safety system, Japanese officials said.

U.S. officials have said the shipment by a New York packer of veal with spinal material, barred under the Japan-U.S. beef trade agreement, was human error and an isolated case.

That explanation has not satisfied Japanese officials, who note that a U.S. government inspector at the packing plant, one of about 40 facilities certified by the U.S. government as eligible beef suppliers to Japan, was unaware of the violation.

"We want them to reconstruct the inspection system from the beginning," Agriculture Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said this week.

Japan could not resume imports until Washington found the cause of the violation and took measures to prevent a reoccurrence, he said.

The suspension came just a month after Japan lifted a two-year ban imposed in December 2003 after the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States. At the time of the ban, annual U.S. beef exports to Japan were worth about $1.4 billion.

Japan was also annoyed by U.S. remarks that played down the risk of mad cow disease, which came at a time when the government was under criticism for appearing to be more concerned about the relationship with Washington than protecting public health.

"In fact, probably getting out of your automobile and walking into the store to buy beef, has a higher probability that you'll be hit by an automobile than ... the probability of any harm coming to you from eating beef," Penn had told reporters.

Asked to comment, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Jinen Nagase said on Wednesday that U.S. officials had better refrain from remarks that sounded like they were not serious about the issue.

ALWAYS FATAL

The New York meatpacker, Atlantic Veal and Lamb, also said it was "absolutely confident" about the safety of its product because the veal came from animals aged less than 4- months. Yonng cattle are considered to have low risk of infection.

Always fatal, mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy ( BSE), is believed to be caused by malformed proteins and spread through infected feed.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human version of BSE, is thought to be spread by eating contaminated meat. It has caused more than 150 deaths worldwide, including one in Japan.

Last Friday, inspectors at Japan's Narita Airport discovered that 390 kg (860 lb) of veal shipped by Atlantic Veal and Lamb contained parts of a spinal cord.

Spinal cords are defined as specified risk materials (SRMs) by the Japan-U.S. beef trade agreement, along with other materials such as bovine heads.

Under the agreement, SRMs must be removed from animals of all ages before beef and beef offal are shipped to Japan.

Japan's Food Safety Commission said last month in a report about the safety of American beef that there was uncertainty about how to ensure specified risk materials were properly removed from U.S. beef and beef offal.

"We had expected that the government would lift a ban on U.S. beef after checking U.S. meatpacking plants by themselves," Yasuhiro Yoshikawa, the chairman of the commission's BSE subcommittee, told Japanese government officials last week.

Japan's Agriculture and Health Ministries dispatched a joint team to check U.S. meatpacking plants after lifting a ban on U.S. beef on December 12.

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