First US Beef Back in Japan Passes Inspection

By Aya Takada

TOKYO — U.S. beef has returned to Japan after six months as the government on Tuesday approved a U.S. firm selling about five tonnes of the meat in its stores in Japan after confirming the product meets Japan’s safety requirements.

The cargo, which arrived at Tokyo’s Narita airport on Monday, was Japan’s first import of U.S. beef since July 27 when Tokyo lifted a ban on American beef that was reinstated six months earlier due to fears of mad cow disease.

The beef was produced by a Cargill Meat Solutions plant in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, and imported by Costco Wholesale Japan, Inc., a unit of U.S. warehouse club operator Costco Wholesale Corp.

"We have finished inspecting the cargo without finding any problems," said an official at Japan’s Health Ministry.

The ministry, in cooperation with Costco, opened all the some 340 boxes of beef to see if they included banned material or meat from old cattle.

To guard against mad cow disease, Japan requires U.S. suppliers to export beef only from animals aged up to 20 months, and to eliminate specified risk materials suspected of spreading the brain-wasting disease, such as spinal cords, before shipment.

Japan’s Agriculture Ministry, which separately conducted an inspection of the beef cargo, also discovered no violation of the requirements, a ministry official said.

Costco, which operates five stores in Japan, will start selling the beef at its shops later this week, a company official said. Three of the stores are in the Tokyo area and the other two are in western Japan.

"We don’t know when we get the next shipment," the official said, adding that they would like to see reaction from Japanese consumers before making additional buy orders.

Japanese retailers are generally cautious about restarting sales of U.S. beef, as media polls have shown that many Japanese consumers remain concerned about its safety.

At present Yoshinoya D&C Co Ltd, an operator of a restaurant chain, is the only major Japanese company that has announced a plan to restart sales of U.S. beef.

Yoshinoya plans to revive its popular beef-bowl menu with U.S. beef in September, but a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday it remained uncertain how much of the meat it would buy.

Before the ban, Yoshinoya bought about 30,000 tonnes of U.S. beef annually to serve beef-bowls at its 1,000 shops in Japan.

Japan was once the top importer of U.S. beef, buying 240,000 tonnes valued at $1.4 billion in 2003. The volume accounted for nearly 30 percent of total beef supplies in Japan.

While U.S. beef was barred from the Japanese market, Australia cemented its position as a top beef exporter to Japan, supplying 406,218 tonnes of beef in the year to last March, or about half of Japan’s overall beef demand.

Initially Japan imposed a ban on imports of U.S. beef in December 2003, following the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease.

The second ban came on January 20, just a month after Japan had lifted the two-year-old ban, when Japanese inspectors found banned material in a veal shipment from a New York company.

Criticizing the Japanese action as excessive, the U.S. government has asked Japan not to suspend beef imports from U.S. plants that met the safety requirements, even if Japan again finds non-compliance with the requirements by a U.S. exporter.

But Tokyo does not rule out the possibility that Japan would again suspend U.S. beef imports in case of a future violation.