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H.K. says seeking explanation for bones in U.S. beef shipment+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)HONG KONG, March 13_(Kyodo) _ Hong Kong has not received a response from U.S. agricultural authorities regarding the discovery of beef products from a U.S. plant containing banned bones, the government said Monday. Hong Kong's Food and Environmental Hygiene Department banned beef imports from Swift Beef Co., a processing plant in Colorado, after bones were found in a shipment on Friday. "Beef imports from only one company were suspended," a department spokesman clarified Monday. "We are contacting the relevant U.S. authorities for more information concerning the beef imports in question." Hong Kong imports more than $80 million worth of U.S. beef and beef products each year, accounting for 30 percent of the territory's total beef imports. The department said Swift constitutes 10 percent of all U.S. beef that Hong Kong imports. According to an agreed protocol, only boneless beef from cattle less than 30 months of age, with high-risk materials such as brain and spinal cord removed during slaughtering, can be imported from designated plants approved by the United States, the spokesman said. Mia Qi of the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong said no information is available on the amount of beef that Swift exports to Hong Kong, but insisted that there is no risk of contracting bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, from the bones. "(The bones in the beef issue) is a food quality, not food safety issue," Qi said. Humans can contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human variant of BSE, through eating meat from an infected animal. Japan reinstated its ban on U.S. beef shipments on Jan. 20 after a spinal column, prohibited under a bilateral accord due to the risk of mad cow disease, was found in a veal shipment at Narita airport. Swift is also a licensed beef exporter to Japan. A Japanese inspection late last year found no problems at the U.S. plant, a high-ranking Japanese farm ministry official said Monday. |