Korea to Keep US Beef Away This Year
By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
South Korea is likely to delay the resumption of U.S. beef imports until next year due to some technical problems in proving its safety from mad cow disease, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MOAF) said Tuesday.
The Korean government has requested information from the U.S. on the second bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) case reported there in June, but it has not arrived, ministry officials said.
``The government plans to convene a meeting of animal disease experts to decide on the resumption of beef imports but the meeting has been postponed due to a delay in the arrival of the requested information,íí MOAF official Kim Chang-sup said.
``We expect the information soon, but it may take several months for the government to make a decision on whether to reopen the market. We will ask for additional documents if the information doesnít contain enough data to ensure the safety of U.S. beef.íí
MOAF official Park Hyun-chool said if Korean experts agree that U.S. beef is safe to eat, trade representatives of the two countries will meet several times to negotiate sanitary conditions and other safety issues, he said.
The U.S. government and the U.S. Meat Export Federation have claimed that the risk of BSE to humans is near zero and have established strong safeguards to protect consumers, but South Korea is requiring more checks.
Seoul delayed the resumption of U.S. beef imports after the U.S. government confirmed the second BSE case in June. The beef ban has been in place since the U.S. reported the first BSE case in December 2003, prompting the global shutdown of U.S. beef.
Washington is a major exporter of meat to Seoul, with dependency on U.S. meat products remaining heavy. Korea restricted imports of U.S. chicken and beef since 2003 due to concerns about the bird flu virus and mad cow disease, but consumer prices shot up because of a shortfall in supply.
South Korea is the fourth-largest consumer of beef in Asia after China, India and Japan and was the third-largest importer of U.S. beef before the ban took effect. In 2003, Seoul imported 199,000 tons of beef from the U.S., about 68 percent of all beef imports that year. It also imported 40,107 tons of chicken from the U.S. that year, about a half of all chicken imports, according to the ministry.
