Japan to lift U.S. beef import ban next week - media
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-07 11:08

Japan will formally decide to lift a ban on U.S. beef imports over mad cow disease next week, ending a two-year stand-off that has frustrated Washington, Japanese media reported on Wednesday.

The Mainichi and Asahi newspapers said Japan's independent Food Safety Commission would submit a final report to the government on Thursday recommending lifting the ban on the import of beef from cattle aged up to 20 months.

Such animals are considered to be at low risk of having the disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The government will then formally lift the ban on Monday, the papers said, allowing U.S. beef back into Japanese shops as early as the end of the year.

A farm ministry official said he had no date for the restart of beef trade.

"We must wait for the panel to submit its report," he said.

Customers check packets of beef in Tokyo. [AFP/file]

Japan banned U.S. beef in December 2003 after the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, halting annual trade worth some $1.4 billion.

Drawn-out negotiations over lifting the ban irked U.S. politicians, several of whom called for retaliatory sanctions on Japan if the ban was not removed.

The United States has consistently maintained that its beef is safe, while Japanese officials have voiced concern that U.S. procedures for monitoring cattle for BSE are ineffective.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said on Tuesday that he was confident that U.S. beef would soon be available in Japan.

"I really do believe the end is in sight here," Johanns told reporters after speaking at a conference.

He expressed hope that South Korea and Taiwan would follow Japan's example and reopen their borders to U.S. beef.

A human version of the disease can be contracted by eating contaminated meat and is blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people worldwide, including one in Japan.

Media polls have shown that many Japanese consumers remain concerned about the safety of U.S. beef.

Kyodo news agency, in a poll of 1,009 respondents taken over the weekend, reported that 75.2 percent said they did not want to eat U.S. beef.

At least one beef bowl restaurant operator, a major consumer of American beef before the ban, has said it will not immediately begin buying from the United States.

"We do not plan to use (U.S. beef) until we ourselves can confirm the safety of the meat," a spokesman for the company, Zensho Co. Ltd. , said last month.

Zensho, which runs over 640 beef-bowl eateries nationwide, said it had replaced U.S. beef with Australian meat, and that it did not face any procurement problems.

Zensho's shares, however, were up 6.6 percent at 2,490 yen in morning trade. Bigger rival Yoshinoya D&C Co. Ltd. was up 2.7 percent at 232,000 yen.

Australia has stepped in to fill the shortfall from the ban, and currently accounts for about 90 percent or more of Japan's imports of the meat.