24 April 2007

2 minute read

Asia

The U.S. beef package arrives at Incheon Airport on April 23.

A shipment of U.S. beef arrived in South Korea on April 23, the first since South Korea rejected three prior shipments for having bone chips, a move which brought strain to trade relations with the U.S. In January last year, the government decided to again allowed imports of U.S. beef, which had been banned since 2003 due to a mad cow disease outbreak in the U.S. However, Korea agreed only to boneless beef from cattle younger than 30 months old, saying this meat would be safe from mad cow disease.

But according to an unreleased 2005 report obtained and made public by Rep. Kang Ki-kab of the Democratic Labor Party, the government said it "cannot rule out the possibility that boneless beef could be contaminated by mad cow disease."

Resuming U.S. beef shipments had been linked indirectly to the U.S. granting South Korea the right to begin free trade talks with it, sources close to the matter say. The trade deal was inked on April 2.

The revealed report was written by the Ministry of Agriculture after the 73rd general session of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). At the OIE meeting in France in May 2005, the South Korean delegation gained agreement for its claim of the possibility of boneless beef contamination from the Japanese and Taiwanese delegations, the report added.

However, the government later called the very same clam groundless when it faced domestic opposition to the restarting of U.S. beef imports.

Responding to the controversy surrounding the revelation of the agricultural ministry document, an official at the ministry's cattle quarantine bureau said, "There were some research reports that certain boneless meat and blood contained mad cow risk, but the OIE has said otherwise. In the 2005 general assembly meeting, the Korean delegation merely said that some research institutes insisted on the possibility of the contamination of the boneless beef.