Japan set to lift ban on US beef imports July 27

TOKYO, July 26 (Reuters) Japan is set to lift a ban on U.S. beef reinstated six months ago due to fears of mad cow disease as early tomorrow.

However, it may not accept imports from all U.S. beef processing plants immediately due to problems found by Japanese inspectors, government officials said today.

Japan's ban on beef from the United States has been one of the thorniest economic issues between Tokyo and Washington.

Inspectors from Japan's agriculture and health ministries have checked all 35 U.S. beef processing plants authorised by the U.S.

government as suppliers to Japan, and found two of them having problems regarding compliance with export requirements agreed between the two countries.

The inspectors were in the U.S. from June 24 to July 22, in line with a June agreement between the two governments that U.S. beef shipments to Japan would restart after Japan inspected the authorised beef plants.

Japanese officials have said shipments will only be allowed into Japan from U.S. plants that they confirm as meeting the export requirements.

Japan is considering keeping a ban on imports from one of the plants, now changing its operations manual, until the government confirms the final contents of the manual, the officials said.

The government is considering lifting a ban on beef imports from one of the remaining 34 U.S. beef plants on condition that the plant is put under close watch by the U.S. government. The plant shipped to Japan beef from cattle slaughtered before it was authorised by the U.S. government as a supplier to Japan.

The government did not disclose the names of the two plants.

Japan is considering allowing imports from the remaining 33 U.S.

beef plants to restart.

The government will make a final decision after getting approval from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party which will discuss the government's plan on later today.

Japan imposed a ban on U.S. beef in December 2003 following the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease.

Last December Japan lifted the two-year-old ban on condition that the meat came only from animals aged up to 20 months and that risk materials such as spinal cords that can spread mad cow disease were removed before shipment.

But a month later it suspended imports after Japanese inspectors found some of the banned materials in a veal shipment from a New York company.

Before the ban, Japan was the top importer of U.S. beef, buying 240,000 tonnes valued at 1.4 billion dollars in 2003.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee voted in June that the United States should impose economic sanctions on Japan if it fails to open its borders to U.S. beef by the end of the summer.

Mad cow disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is believed to be caused by malformed proteins and spread through infected feed. The human variant of the disease is thought to be spread by eating contaminated meat and has caused more than 160 deaths worldwide, including one in Japan.

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