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LEAD: U.S. fully probing beef shipments to Japan: Johanns+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)WASHINGTON, Jan. 20_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING MORE INFO UNDER 2ND GRAF) U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Friday the United States is conducting a thorough investigation into beef shipments to Japan after a bovine body part considered a mad cow disease risk was discovered in Japan. "We take this matter very seriously," Johanns said in a statement. "We are conducting a thorough investigation." "Under U.S. regulations, the backbone, or vertebral column, that was exported to Japan is not a specified risk material because it was in beef under 30 months. However, our agreement with Japan is to export beef with no vertebral column and we have failed to meet the terms of that agreement," he said. On Friday, Japan said it will halt U.S. beef imports completely after vertebral columns were discovered in a beef shipment, just a month after Japan resumed beef imports from the United States. Japan banned the import of American beef in December 2003 following the discovery of a cow infected with the brain-wasting disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in the United States. But Tokyo lifted the ban on Dec. 12 last year on condition that the meat comes from cows aged 20 months or younger and brains, spinal cords and other specified risk material that could transmit BSE are removed. |