TMCnet News
Japan officials note 'progress' on U.S. beef quality control+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) GREELEY, Colorado, July 3_(Kyodo) _ Japan's senior vice ministers of agriculture and health said Monday that U.S. meatpackers are making progress on their efforts to ensure that risk materials for transmitting mad cow disease will not find their way into beef shipments to Japan. The two vice ministers visited the Greeley, Colorado plant of major meatpacker Swift & Co. and afterward Mitsuhiro Miyakoshi of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said he could see that U.S. meat processors are sufficiently motivated to abide by the conditions that need to be met if they are to resume beef exports to Japan. Miyakoshi and Masao Akamatsu of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare checked the Swift plant as part of Japan's investigation of 35 meat-processing facilities across the United States that began in late June. Japan's policy calls for allowing U.S. facilities certified to be safe to resume exports, possibly later this month. Japan and the United States agreed June 21 that Japan will lift its reinstated ban on U.S. beef imports after inspecting U.S. meatpacking plants to confirm safeguard measures against bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease. On Dec. 12, Japan ended its original import ban on U.S. beef imposed after the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease two years earlier. It reinstated the ban Jan. 20 after backbone parts, whose export is prohibited, were discovered in a veal shipment at Narita airport. |