US puts pressure on Seoul to ease beef ban further

Senior US officials pressed South Korea on Friday to go further in lifting a ban on importing US beef imposed because of mad cow disease.

The officials are putting similar pressure on Japan, which lifted its own ban last month and helped pave the way for such actions by Hong Kong and South Korea.

South Korea agreed early on Friday to resume shipments of US beef, which had been prohibited since the December 2003 discovery of mad cow disease in the US.

But a prohibition will remain on ribs and other bone-in beef, which keeps closed about 45 percent of the potential market. South Korea was worth a total of US$815 million to US producers in the year before the ban. The country once was the third-biggest customer of US beef behind Japan and Mexico.

The agreement is a positive step, but the Bush administration is "extremely disappointed" in South Korea's restrictions, US Trade Representative Rob Portman said.

"We will continue to urge Korea in the strongest terms to open its market without delay," Portman said.

Hours South Korea agreed to accept US beef, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns met in Washington with Japan's minister of agriculture, Shoichi Nakagawa. Like South Korea, Japan still imposes restrictions; no US beef is allowed from cows younger than 21 months.

Under standards, US imports should include beef from animals up to 30 months of age as well as beef ribs. The guidelines are set by the World Organization for Animal Health in France.

Nakagawa consumers in Japan view US beef as an entirely new product and that it will take time to reassure them fully. Japan has stricter standards than world guidelines and cannot make an exception for the US or any other country, Nakagawa said, speaking through an interpreter at a news conference with Johanns.

Exports Japan resumed quickly last month. The US has regained about 82 percent of beef export markets worth US$3.9 billion in 2003.

Shipments South Korea should resume by the end of March, South Korea's government said in a statement on Friday. Officials there want restrictions on bones out of fear that marrow and other bone tissues might be dangerous. US officials contend that international guidelines say those tissues can be safely traded.

The medical name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. BSE is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle. It's linked to a rare but fatal nerve disorder in humans, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, believed to be caused by eating meat or cattle products contaminated with mad cow disease.

The US has found two cases of mad cow disease, the first in 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state, the second last June in a Texas-born cow. Japan has found 21 cases of mad cow disease. South Korea has not found any cases of the disease, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.