Taiwan will determine whether to resume US beef imports after inspecting slaughterhouses in the country as early as next month, a government official said after meeting with a US delegation in Taipei yesterday.
Taiwan issued a seven-year ban on US beef imports and related products in last December, after a cow tested positive for mad cow disease in Washington State.
"If the US fully implements the new slaughtering procedure as it claimed previously, we may re-open the market at the end of the year at the earliest," Chen Lu-hung (陳陸宏), director of the Department of Health's (DOH) Food Safety Bureau, said after meeting with a delegation of US officials led by US Department of Agriculture Undersecretary J.B. Penn yesterday morning.
During the meeting, Penn called on the Taiwanese government to lift the ban on US beef imports as soon as possible, Chen said.
Penn had just wrapped up a visit to Japan, the US' biggest overseas customer for beef, over the weekend. Japan agreed to conditionally lift the ban on US beef exports after having banned them for the last 10 months. Penn left Taiwan last night.
At the end of March, the US Department of Agriculture filed an application to the DOH asking for the beef ban to be lifted and presented reports showing that the infected cow was an isolated case. The report also indicated that the US has adopted new regulations in slaughtering cattle to prevent possible contamination. As a result, the department has tested about 85,000 high-risk cows since June, and all have tested negative for the disease.
Much like Japan, which is only allowing cattle under 20 months old to re-enter the market, Chen said the DOH will list the import qualifications for cows, as well as other products, including dried blood, powdered bones and serum, after the visit in November.
Before the ban, Taiwan was the US' sixth-largest overseas buyer of beef, while the US ranked third among countries Taiwan imports beef from. According to statistics from the Council of Agriculture, Taiwan imported 12,859.15 tonnes of beef valued at US$54.73 million last year from the US, or about 23 percent of all imported beef.
Due to the suspension, local meat merchants have increased beef imports from Australia and New Zealand. According to council statistics, Taiwan has imported a total of 41,946.11 tonnes of beef valued at US$146 billion from the two countries this year.
In addition to the US, Canada in April also applied to have a similar ban removed that the government put in place in late May of last year after a single case of mad cow disease was found in the country. Chen said the DOH will start to look into the application next month.
Canada was Taiwan's fourth-largest beef supplier in 2002, with 3,400 tonnes imported. The figure dropped steeply to 1,927.55 tonnes last year.
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