Japan says more US mad cow cases possible
Date: 20-Jan-04
Country: JAPAN
Japan, the biggest buyer of U.S. beef, banned imports from the United States last month after the discovery there of a case of the brain wasting illness, properly called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
Japan has also suspended imports from Canada after the discovery of a cow with BSE in May last year. The United States and Canada have said the U.S. mad cow case originated in Canada.
"(Given the situation), it is difficult to say that there is a significant difference in the level of BSE contamination between the United States and Canada," a ministry fact-finding team dispatched to North America from January 8-18 said in a report.
"There is no guarantee that BSE will not occur again in the United States," it said.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Undersecretary J.B. Penn will visit Japan this week to explain new U.S. safeguards so that trade can resume.
He will also be travelling to the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea.
A Farm Ministry official, briefing reporters about the Japanese fact-finding trip, said there had been no discussion on resuming U.S. exports.
Washington has been pressuring Japan - the biggest buyer of U.S. beef - to lift the ban, which has halted U.S. exports to Japan worth about $1 billion (560 million pounds) a year, or about 45 percent of Japan's beef imports.
Canada also wants Japan to resume imports, which amounted to just under 20,000 tonnes in the year to March 2003, or about 3.7 percent of Japanese beef imports.
The U.S. case of mad cow has been traced back to Alberta, Canada's biggest cattle-producing province and normally a major supplier of live animals and beef to the United States.
Japan has said that the United States must introduce safety checks that are of the same level as Japan, which tests all cattle slaughtered for consumption.
The United States does not test all cattle used for food, however, and has so far responded coolly to the idea.
Canada also does not test all its cattle for the disease.
The report pointed, among others, to the close ties between the beef industry and related sectors in the United States and Canada, where there has been a flow of live cattle and feed, including meat-and-bone meal (MBM).
MBM is often blamed as a likely source of mad cow disease.
Japan imposed a ban on the import, sale and use of MBM as feed after it confirmed its first case of mad cow disease in September 2001.
A rare human form of BSE, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), can result from eating animal products contaminated with BSE.
MEXICO EASING STANCE
There have been some signs of a reprieve for the U.S. beef market.
On Friday, Mexico's agriculture secretary said Mexico will ease its ban on some U.S. beef products as soon as Washington implements new safeguards for preventing another case of mad cow disease.
Mexico, the second largest foreign buyer of U.S. beef, stopped importing U.S. beef and livestock after the discovery of BSE.
The comment was made after Javier Usabiaga met his U.S. and Canadian counterparts in Washington DC. Meanwhile, a research group said in a recent report that a prolonged ban by Japan could hurt its economy.
Dai-ichi Life Research, a unit of Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co, one of Japan's largest life insurance companies, said a ban lasting six months would cut gross domestic product (GDP) in the business year beginning April by 0.02 percent.
GDP could fall 0.05 percent if the ban is longer and a shortage of beef results.
"Rises in meat prices will bring changes in economic activity such as holding down consumption and raising import costs, affecting consumers and the earnings of companies in the food industry," the report said.
