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Japanese Audit Team Tours Swift Plant in Greeley, Colo.

Posted on: Saturday, 17 December 2005, 00:00 CST

By Bill Jackson, Greeley Tribune, Colo.

Dec. 16--Greeley's Swift & Co. beef packing plant got a close examination by an audit team from Japan on Thursday, part of the process of re-opening the Japanese market to U.S. beef, which was announced earlier this week.

Under the agreement, the United States is able to export beef from cattle 20 months of age and younger to Japan. More than 94 percent of total U.S. ruminant and ruminant products, with an export value of $1.7 billion in 2003, are now eligible for export to Japan. In 2003, the United States exported $1.4 billion worth of beef and beef products to Japan.

The Greeley plant is one of 28 packing plants nationwide initially cleared to export beef to Japan following the closure of that market two years ago when a cow in Washington, born in Canada, was found to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- mad cow disease.

It was thought the Japanese officials would discuss their audit following the tour, but Lynn Heinze with the U.S. Meat Export Federation in Denver, which arranged the tour, said the officials decided they would wait until they completed all of their tours before issuing a statement.

"They came into Denver Tuesday night, spent Wednesday in Fort Morgan at the Cargill Meat Solutions plant, today (Thursday) at Swift and on their way to Nebraska they are going to tour a ranch and feedlots," Heinze said. He said there are two teams in the U.S. One team is looking at operations in Colorado and Nebraska, the other in Texas and Kansas.

Sean McHugh, spokesman for Swift, said the four Japanese officials took an audit of the plant's operational and administrative procedures, focusing on food safety issues. He said he could only assume the plant passed the examination.

"We've given access to almost anyone who wants to check those procedures," McHugh said.

In June, an American/Japanese technical team toured the packing plant as officials from the two countries were in the midst of working out differences over the BSE issue. Japan has also had confirmed cases of the disease and as that country re-opened its border to U.S. beef, the U.S. re-opened imports of Japanese beef.

"We should be ready to ship beef to Japan any day now," McHugh said.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Greeley Tribune, Colo.

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Source: Greeley Tribune, Colorado

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