A senior official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in charge of livestock quarantine said yesterday the government has no plan to ban beef imports from the three.

In the first half of 2006, delegates from the ministry found that the three companies, which hold about 60 percent of the U.S. meat processing industry, were ineligible to export beef to Korea because of food safety.

Although the ministry did not make public the result of the delegates’ investigation in the U.S. market, some Korean lawmakers recently unveiled the list of rule-violators.

The official said, ``There is no reason for the government to block their exports.’’ He said that U.S. beef exporters have been allowed to export beef since early September.

Source: hankooki.com