The Bush administration this weekend will press Japanese officials to resume buying American beef, four months after a lone case of mad cow disease all but halted overseas sales.
The U.S. beef industry was initially hit hard by the mad cow discovery, but prices have largely rebounded and exports have partially resumed to two of the country’s top four trade partners.
“For all intents and purposes, we have this thing resolved within North America. Now we are hopeful that things will go well in Tokyo,” said Gregg Doud, chief economist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, an industry group representing ranchers.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman on Dec. 23 disclosed the country’s first case of mad cow disease, a fatal brain-wasting disorder formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. The discovery cost the cattle industry about $3.8 billion last year as foreign markets banned U.S. beef, and triggered a broad investigation to eliminate the source of the disease and prevent infected animal tissue from entering the food chain.
USDA reassurances have been effective with consumers, whose demand for beef remains strong. And Mexico and Canada, No. 2 and No. 4 markets for U.S. beef, respectively, this year resumed trade of some cuts of meat, though live cattle trade is still shut down. All together, about one-third of U.S. export markets have been reopened, said Ed Lloyd, a USDA spokesman.
That leaves Japan, the top market for U.S. beef last year with about $1.2 billion in exports, and South Korea, the No. 3 market, as the next major targets for a government and industry anxious to get back to normal. Together, the top four countries accounted for more than 90 percent of U.S. beef exports last year.
J.B. Penn, undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, this weekend is set to meet with Yoshiyuki Kamei, Japan’s agriculture minister, to press for an eventual resumption of beef trade. Mr. Penn last week said he is optimistic “that we have some opportunity to make some progress.”
But Japan has insisted that U.S. slaughterhouses test all cattle entering the human food chain for mad cow disease, a measure in place in Japan but rejected by the American government and most industry officials as unnecessary and unscientific.
The United States tested 20,543 animals during the 2004 fiscal year. Under an enhanced one-year program announced last month, USDA will test 268,000 head of cattle. Almost 8 million cattle were commercially slaughtered in the first three months of this year.
Japan’s vice agriculture minister, Mamoru Ishihara, yesterday said his government still wanted the United States to introduce 100 percent testing, Reuters reported.
One possible compromise would be creation of a working group to mediate a solution.
Mr. Lloyd said the two sides would look for a “science-based solution” for the impasse, including a possible turn to the World Organization for Animal Health, an international body that collects and analyzes scientific information on animal disease control. American beef producers are especially hopeful that some resolution is possible. While prices have held steady, industry groups estimate they have lost millions in revenue because valuable exports are worth much less on the U.S. market.
Beef tongue, for example, fetches about 49 cents a pound in the United States, where it is generally ground into pet food, but is worth roughly $22 per pound on international markets, the U.S. Meat Export Federation estimates. The extra generated value is about $328 million a year.
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