US will answer Japan soon on beef report: Johanns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Agriculture Department
officials are studying questions from Tokyo about their recent
report on U.S. shipments of banned cattle parts to Japan and
should deliver the information soon, U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Mike Johanns said on Wednesday.

“We have received the questions from Japan about the report
that we submitted a few weeks ago,” Johanns told a media
briefing.

“I did not see anything in those questions that was
terribly surprising,” he continued. “We should have that
information back to Japan maybe even as early as next week. The
process continues to go along very well.”

Japan shut off imports of U.S. beef in January over fears
about mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), after its inspectors discovered banned spinal column
cattle parts in a veal shipment from New York.

The action came just a month after Japan had lifted a
2-year-old ban on U.S. beef imports on condition that meat
should come from cattle aged up to 20 months, and that
specified parts seen as relatively risky, including spinal
column tissue, were removed before the meat was shipped.

The U.S. Agriculture Department submitted a report on
February 17 that examined the violation and suggested steps to
prevent a repetition.

“My hope is that there’s a point where we can get the
technical people together to resolve the final issues that are
there – Japan had talked about some additional requirements
related to inspection — and get those identified and then move
to reopen the market to Japanese beef,” Johanns said.

“So far, so good.”