Japan won’t use beef import curbs next year-paper

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan, which will soon lift a two-year
ban on U.S. beef imposed due to mad cow disease, will refrain
from employing safeguard curbs against an expected surge in
meat imports next year, a local daily said on Sunday.

In a bid to prevent friction with the United States, the
government plans to raise the hurdle for imposing emergency
curbs against beef imports, the Nihon Keizai financial daily
said.

Under the current safeguard system, higher tariffs would
automatically be imposed on beef if imports increase by more
than 17 percent year-on-year over a certain period, the paper
said.

This means that such curbs would likely be imposed as early
as next August if U.S. beef imports resume, it said.

The government is considering a change in which
current-year import levels would be to compared to levels over
the preceding three years rather than to year-ago levels, when
determining whether safeguards would be imposed, the paper
said.

The government plans to submit legislation to parliament
next year to make needed changes, it added.

Farm ministry officials were not immediately available for
comment.

The report came after Japan’s Food Safety Commission said
on Thursday it had approved the easing of a two-year government
ban on U.S. and Canadian beef, paving the way for partial
imports to resume this month.

Japanese media have reported that the government would
officially announce an easing of the ban on Monday.

Japan banned U.S. beef in December 2003 after the discovery
of the United States’ first case of mad cow disease, formally
known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), halting annual
trade worth some $1.4 billion.

Drawn out negotiations over lifting it have irked U.S.
politicians, several of whom have called for retaliatory
sanctions on Japan if the ban is not removed.