First US beef cargo in six months reaches Japan

TOKYO, Aug 7 (Reuters) The first shipment of US beef to Japan since Tokyo lifted a six-month-old ban on the American product last month arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport today and will be allowed into the market if it meets requirements, government officials said.

The cargo of 5.1 tonnes of chilled beef was produced by Cargill Meat Solutions in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, and imported by Costco Wholesale Japan, Inc., a unit of US warehouse club operator Costco Wholesale Corp.

In line with a June agreement between the two governments over beef trade resumption, Japan's Health Ministry will ask Costco to open all the boxes containing the beef, about 340, to see if they include banned material or meat from old cattle.

To guard against mad cow disease, Japan requires US suppliers to export beef only from animals aged up to 20 months, and to eliminate specified risk materials suspected of spreading the brain-wasting disease, such as spinal cords, before shipment.

''We will check if the cargo is tainted with specified risk materials, and approve it to enter the country unless we find problems,'' Vice Agriculture Minister Yoshio Kobayashi told reporters today.

The agriculture and health ministries will conduct inspection of the US beef cargo separately, and Costco needs to obtain approval from both of the ministries.

Costco will start checking the beef boxes tomorrow, a health ministry official said, adding that the quarantine office at the airport would begin its own inspection of the cargo after obtaining a report from the company.

''If things go smoothly, we can complete the whole procedure as early as tomorrow,'' the official said.

Costco operates five warehouses in Japan, of which three are in the Tokyo area and two in western Japan.

On July 27, Japan lifted a ban on US beef that had been reinstated six months ago due to fears of mad cow disease, after it inspected all the authorised US beef processing plants and concluded most of them could operate in line with Japan's safety requirements.

Initially Japan imposed a ban on imports of US beef in December 2003, following the discovery of the first US case of mad cow disease.

The second ban came on January. 20, just a month after Japan had lifted the two-year-old ban, when Japanese inspectors found banned material in a veal shipment from a New York company.

Criticising the Japanese action as excessive, the US government has asked Japan not to suspend beef imports from US plants that met the safety requirements, even if Japan again finds non-compliance with the requirements by a US exporter.

But Tokyo does not rule out the possibility that Japan would again suspend US beef imports in case of a future violation.

Japanese retailers are generally cautious about restarting sales of US beef, as media polls have shown that many Japanese consumers remain concerned about the safety of US beef.

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

REUTERS PB DS1230