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TOKYO
—(AP)— Japan's suggestion of testing all American cattle for
“mad cow” disease would not significantly improve the safety of
the beef supply, the head of a U.S. delegation visiting for talks with
Japanese officials said late last week. J.B.
Penn, U.S. undersecretary for farm and agricultural services, said
such blanket testing would needlessly divert resources from other more
effective measures to check the spread of the bovine illness. ``It
just seems to us that 100 percent testing doesn't do much to enhance
the safety or the security of the beef supply,'' Penn said in an
interview with The Associated Press ahead of Friday's talks with the
Japanese. ``So we look at the science and say there ought to be a
better way to do that.'' Penn
leads a team of eight U.S. officials in Tokyo to try to persuade
Japanese officials to lift a ban on American beef imports imposed Dec.
24 after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, was discovered in a cow in Washington state. Japan,
which suffered its first case of mad cow disease in 2001, now tests
every bovine for the disease, and officials are pressing the United
States to implement a similar system. Penn,
however, said that most experts believe tests cannot detect the
disease in cattle younger than 30 months old, meaning that testing
them would not be useful. He said follow-up checks on two cattle under
that age that tested positive for mad cow in Japan had not been
conclusive. Japan
has said that two bulls younger than 30 months old had tested positive
for the disease last year. In Europe, three cows younger than 30
months have tested positive for the disease since 2001. The
U.S. delegation will not present the Japanese with new proposed safety
measures, but will instead lay out what steps the United States has
taken so far and present evidence that the Americans believe shows
their safety guidelines are adequate, he said. ``We're
not bringing a new proposal beyond the things that we have already
talked about,'' Penn said. ``That doesn't mean to say that we're not
open to a broad-ranging discussion. We want to find a practical
solution to this problem.'' Japan,
one of more than 30 countries to have banned U.S. beef, sent a
delegation to the United States and Canada earlier this month to
investigate the case and get a close look at North American safety
measures. The team concluded that U.S. measures were still inadequate. Japan
also bans beef imports from Canada. Tokyo
broadened its tracking of U.S. beef in Japan on Wednesday, ordering
meat wholesalers not to sell hundreds of tons of American T-bone
steaks and other beef products that had been imported before the ban
was imposed. The order targeted products thought to be more
susceptible to the disease. Before
the ban, Japan was the most lucrative overseas market for the United
States, buying about $1 billion worth of its beef and beef products a
year. Penn said Washington was eager to reopen that market, in part
because it could induce other countries banning U.S. beef to lower
their barriers. He
also noted that 29 percent of all the beef consumed in Japan was
imported from the United States, and the ban could hurt restaurant and
retail businesses here. ``My
sense is the Japanese government doesn't want a market disruption any
more than we do,'' Penn said. |
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