Gov’t to Send Inspectors to U.S., Canada to Check Safety of Beef

By Kyodo News International, Tokyo

Oct. 31–TOKYO — The health and agriculture ministries will resume sending inspectors to the United States and Canada to conduct snap checks on the safety of beef products after Japan lifts its beef import ban on the two countries, officials said Monday.

The decision coincides with a draft report adopted by a food safety panel the same day recommending an end to Japan’s two-year-old ban on U.S. and Canadian beef.

The draft compiled by a research group under Japan’s Food Safety Commission said beef from cattle aged up to 20 months in the two countries is at “very low” risk if specific risk materials that could transmit mad cow disease are properly removed and the Japanese government takes responsibility for strict compliance with that condition.

The recommendation paves the way for Japan to resume imports of beef from the two countries, possibly in December.

There are about 40 meat processing plants in the United States and several in Canada that will be subject to Japanese inspection, the officials said.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministries will send two teams at a time, each consisting of two or three members from the respective ministries.

The inspectors will check whether U.S. and Canadian beef clears conditions for Japan’s resumption of imports, such as the removal of specified risk materials like the brain and spinal cord and the age of cows processed into beef for shipments to Japan, they said.

The first team is expected to be sent before the resumption of imports.

The government plans to continue dispatching inspectors, they said, adding the health ministry has asked for a budget appropriation of 30 million yen in fiscal 2006 to cover related travel expenses.

Japan has banned Canadian and U.S. beef imports since mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was discovered in Canada in May 2003 and the United States in December that year.

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