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U.S. Beef to Make Comeback Soon in Japan

Posted on: Saturday, 26 August 2006, 09:00 CDT

By CHISAKI WATANABE

TOKYO - A Japanese restaurant chain plans to resume serving U.S. beef soon at dozens of its branches nationwide, company officials said Saturday. It would be the first to do so since Tokyo eased an import ban over concerns about mad cow disease.

Zenshoku, based in the western Osaka prefecture (state), said it will offer U.S. beef at its 57 Korean barbecue restaurants across Japan, but company spokeswoman Tae Okuda said no date has been set yet.

Japan's business daily Nihon Keizai reported earlier that the chain planned to introduce American beef as early as Tuesday.

The company's president and officials visited two food processing plants in California and Colorado earlier this month and confirmed they meet safety standards to export beef to Japan, Okuda said.

The chain plans to show a videotape of the inspection trip at its outlets to put customers at ease over whether U.S. beef was safe to consume, she said.

"Our beef comes only from processing plants which we found treat beef appropriately and are considered safe," the company statement said.

"We think that we should be able to have a choice," Okuda said. "Compared with imported beef from other countries, American beef is more suitable for Korean barbecue as the meat is juicy."

Tokyo first banned U.S. beef in 2003 over mad cow disease concerns. That year, the Japan-U.S. beef trade was valued at $1.4 billion. The ban was lifted in December 2005, but was reinstated a month later after prohibited spinal bones were found in a veal shipment.

The ban was lifted again last month. However, businesses have since been slow to carry U.S. beef, using domestic and Australian beef instead.

Only Costco Wholesale Japan Inc., a unit of the American retailer, has openly pushed American beef, selling beef steaks at five stores across Japan.

Ongoing safety restrictions also have severely limited Japan's beef imports. American beef is restricted to cattle aged 20 months or less with bones and spinal material removed.

Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is a brain degenerative disease in cattle. In humans, eating meat contaminated with BSE is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rare and deadly nerve disease.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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