Personal Injury Law

U.S. Meat Export Federation Also Wants Less BSE Testing, Especially By Japan

Everyone, at one time or another, has used "white noise" as a sleep aid.   National Public Radio (NPR) tries to keep it a secret, but its over-night broadcasts are highly effective "white noise" for many people. The inclusion of the BBC reports are very useful to those seeking shut-eye.

The trouble for those of us who indulge in this practice is sometimes we hear things in a half asleep-half awake state that leaves us confused the next day.   There was a report over the weekend about South Korea's taste for beef after all the protests and political unrest due to the resumption of U.S. beef imports.   We thought we heard that McDonald's, however, had signs that read: "Only Safe Australian Beef Served."

We thought thought we'd check and see if U.S. Beef is doing anything about this marketing challenge, and instead we found the Denver-based U.S. Meat Export Federation is focused on turning Japanese government opinion against so much BSE testing.  We learned the USMEF hosted a conference in Tokyo just last week with this focus:

An overreliance on meaningless testing and a lack of focus on documenting the effectiveness of steps that are making significant inroads against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) are hindering a hungry world’s access to protein, driving up food costs and harming local economies as well as the U.S. beef industry.

According to the USMEF, Japan’s insistence on 100 percent testing for all cattle has been a costly error, but one that is difficult to reverse because it has been portrayed to consumers in Japan as an essential safety step.  Japan was U.S, Beef's largest export market until the 2003 discovery of a Mad Cow from a herd in Canada found its way into Washington State.

USMEF presented speakers who claimed Japan is spending $10 billion a year on useless testing.

Meanwhile, we went to Meat & Poultry, the business journal for meat and poultry processors, to learn that since June, nearly 20,000 tons of U.S. beef has entered South Korea.

Go here for the Meat & Poultry story on the export federation's conference in Japan.  Now we will go back to sleep and maybe learn something else by morning!

Full post as published by Mad Cow Blog on October 19, 2008 (boomark / email).