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US will answer Japan soon on beef report-Johanns

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 18:20 CST

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."

Source: REUTERS

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