Plants Get Preliminary OK on Sales to Japan
By Joe Ruff, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.
May 17–Eight meatpacking plants in Nebraska and two in Iowa are among 37 nationwide with preliminary approval to ship beef to Japan once trade resumes.
The plants are at the center of talks in Tokyo this week as U.S. officials seek to reopen a Japanese market closed since January over concerns about mad cow disease.
“These are the plants that would begin shipping beef to Japan,” said U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman Ed Lloyd.
Federal agriculture officials have audited the plants’ ability to meet Japanese demands for safeguards against mad cow disease. The precautions include banning meat from cows older than 20 months.
The plants also must remove material like bones that the Japanese fear might carry mad cow disease, a brain-wasting disorder in cattle that has been linked to a rare but deadly illness in humans.
Japanese officials have asked questions about audits of the plants this week, and those questions will be answered, Lloyd said. The main negotiations with Japan were expected to begin today, Lloyd said.
The 37 plants, including facilities in Omaha, Schuyler and Lexington, were among those approved for exporting to Japan in December 2005. That was when Japan eased its two-year-old ban on U.S. beef instituted in December 2003, after the first discovery of mad cow disease in the United States.
However, a New York-based company in January accidentally shipped veal cuts containing backbone — material banned under the U.S. agreement with Japan — and Japan once again cut off trade.
The cut of veal is eaten in the United States and is allowed under international trade rules. However, U.S. officials acknowledged that its pact with Japan had been violated. The processing plant that shipped the product to Japan was taken off the list of approved exporters. No plant has been added to the list since trade was cut off.
Once trade resumes, more plants could apply to ship products to Japan, Lloyd said. It is hoped that talks this week will lead to resumption of trade, he said.
“It’s tough to put a timeline on it. We believe it’s time for them to open their market now.”
Japan may want its officials to visit all 37 plants on the list of approved exporters, which would be fine, Lloyd said. But the United States does not want Japanese surveys of the plants to be used as a delaying tactic, Lloyd said.
“There’s going to be growing pressure from members of Congress and elsewhere for them to do this (resume trade).”
Additional safeguards the United States has instituted since January include requiring two federal inspectors to sign shipments before they are sent to Japan, Lloyd said.
Japanese officials visited Greater Omaha Packing Co. in Omaha before trade resumed late last year, and another visit would not be unexpected, said Kathleen Krantz, the company’s vice president of technical resources.
“They want to have firsthand knowledge of what is shipped to them,” Krantz said.
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