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Johanns meets with Japanese over U.S. beef

Posted on: Tuesday, 31 January 2006, 16:38 CST

By Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese consumers are leery of eating U.S. beef and it could take months to rebuild their confidence after a shipment of veal was found with forbidden material, five lawmakers from Japan's minority party said after meeting Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns on Tuesday.

The delegation, members of the opposition Democratic Party, handed Johanns a letter that described the event as "a serious problem that cannot be dismissed as a simple mistake."

"We had a very heated discussion," Japanese Congressman Takashi Shinohara told reporters after meeting Johanns. "Many, many different consumers distrust the American way of inspection."

Tokyo suspended trade on January 20 after its inspectors found part of a calf's backbone -- prohibited under a U.S.-Japan agreement -- in a veal shipment from New York. It was only a month after Japan ended a two-year ban on U.S. beef.

The Japanese lawmakers also met the chairmen of the Senate and House Agriculture committees.

The Democratic Party had called for Japan's agriculture minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, to resign after he acknowledged on Monday that Japan had only begun inspecting meat plants in the United States after lifting the ban.

Last November, the cabinet had promised the government would inspect U.S. meatpacking plants to ensure they complied with agreed procedures before imports resumed.

"I am not considering leaving my post," Nakagawa told a news conference on Tuesday.

Johanns said even if Japanese inspectors had visited the Atlantic Veal and Lamb plant where the meat was shipped from, it was unlikely they would have detected the mistake.

Japan was the No. 1 buyer of American beef until December 2003 when the United States discovered its first case of mad cow disease.

Johanns described the meeting with Japanese lawmakers as a "candid, frank discussion."

"We want to be very transparent about this," he added.

Officials in Japan say imports will not resume until after the United States submits a report on how the incident occurred and steps are taken to prevent it from happening again.

In the letter to Johanns, the delegation said the United States also must meet other conditions, including implementing traceability for all beef and retraining inspectors.

"Once they are cleared, we are open to having beef imported into Japan as much as possible," said Kenji Yamaoka, vice president of the Democratic Party of Japan.

USDA has vowed to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident and impose stricter scrutiny of U.S. meat plants by conducting surprise inspections and requiring two inspectors to review each export shipment.

The USDA has declined to estimate when the investigation would be completed, but Johanns said he would not "sacrifice thoroughness for speed."

Japan requires all U.S. beef it imports to be free of the brains, spinal columns and other nervous tissue most at risk of carrying the infective agent for mad cow disease. The United States has said the materials found in the New York shipment pose no threat when derived from the younger animals used in trade with Japan.

The United States has struggled to rebuild its beef export market which totaled $3.8 billion annually three years ago. Only recently have South Korea and Hong Kong, previously the third-largest and fifth-largest overseas markets, respectively, eased their bans on U.S. beef.

Last week, Taiwan announced it would resume imports of boneless beef from American cattle under 30 months as long as the meat does not contain specified risk material such as brain or spinal material.

(Additional reporting by Charles Abbott in Washington and Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo)

Source: REUTERS

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