North America Farm Ministers Meet on Mad Cow Concerns
Date: 19-Jan-04
Country: USA
Author: Richard Cowan
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, hosting the meeting in Washington, has a delicate balancing act as she was expected to ask Mexican Agriculture Minister Javier Usabiaga to reopen his country's border to American beef.
Mexico stopped allowing imports of U.S. beef and live cattle after the Dec. 23 discovery of one case of mad cow disease in a Holstein cow slaughtered in Washington state.
USDA officials have insisted that the cow, which was born in Canada, does not represent a wide-scale problem and that U.S. beef is safe.
But at the same time, the United States has been banning some Canadian beef and all live cattle since last May's announcement by Ottawa that Canada had found one case of mad cow disease.
Canadian Agriculture Minister Bob Speller told reporters last week that he did not expect Friday's meeting to produce an announcement that cattle will begin moving south of the border again. A USDA decision on relaxing this trade control has been put on hold pending an investigation of the U.S. mad cow case.
"The focal point of that discussion will be BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease) and harmonization of food safety and animal health standards across North America," said USDA Undersecretary J.B. Penn of the ministers' discussions.
The three officials have scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m. EST following their meetings.
Penn, in an interview with USDA Radio last week, added that he hoped Mexico would reopen its market to American beef "fairly soon."
Mexico is the second largest buyer of American beef for an industry that sells about $3.2 billion worth abroad each year.
Penn and other Bush administration officials will be in Japan next week, hoping to convince Tokyo to ease the trade ban it implemented after the discovery of the U.S. mad cow case. Japan, the largest export market for U.S. beef, buys about $1 billion worth annually.
A Japanese technical team just spent about a week in the United States, reviewing new steps to prevent the spread of the animal brain-wasting disease, which has been linked to about 140 human deaths, mostly in Europe.
Penn told USDA Radio that his visit to Japan will be aimed at explaining new U.S. safeguards so that trade can resume "as quickly as possible."
Japanese officials recently have expressed concern about the adequacy of USDA's new rules on cattle slaughter. But they also have said they want to cooperate with U.S. attempts to reopen trade in a "step-by-step" manner.
