| ||||
|
|
U.S., Japan to meet quietly on BSE
By Richard Hanson
DTN Special Correspondent
TOKYO (DTN)--Top U.S. and Japanese officials will meet quietly in Tokyo in mid-October, to attempt to hammer out the details of an agreement to end a nearly 10-month-long ban on imports of American-raised beef to Japan.
DTN has learned the U.S. delegation to Tokyo will be headed up by U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture J.B. Penn, who has been the point man in often contentious confrontations and negotiations since last January, when he made his first BSE mission to Japan and other parts of Asia.
The broad purpose of this visit appears to be an attempt to smooth relations with new Japanese cabinet ministers named in a late September government reshuffle by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Key among the new players is Yoshinobu Shimamura, who replaced Yoshiyuki Kamei as the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
The other influential post of Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) went to Hidehisa Otsuji, who is less of a defender of the government's test-all policy. He replaced Chikara Sakaguchi, who staunchly supported the test-all policy.
Shimamura is the more influential minister, having served in the post in the late 1990s. He is also from an electoral district in the middle of Tokyo, which may make him more amenable to easing the BSE rules.
Japan stopped importing U.S. beef last December, after U.S. Department of Agriculture reported the nation's first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Washington state.
This will be Penn's first visit to Japan since late April, when he headed an attempt to end a two-and-one-half month deadlock in negotiations. That is when U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney intervened to suggest the two sides resume talking with each other. Talks had stalled out since February. During the deadlock, Penn was busy negotiating a partial reopening of the Mexican market for U.S. beef, which he suggested at the time could serve as a "model" for other countries, such as Japan, to follow.
The first late-April meeting that resulted was dubbed the "The Third Japan-U.S. Consultation on the BSE Issues." The first two meetings were encounters soon after USDA announced the first BSE case. What followed were three monthly meetings of a BSE working group, made up of experts from the U.S. and Japan. Both sides tended to argue along partisan lines.
U.S. participants emphasized that Japan's policy of testing all cattle for BSE was not based on sound science. Japan may have agreed with that argument, but the government's basic stance remained intact. At the end of the three months, a joint report was issued highlighting the areas of disagreement.
After the July meeting there was a pause. Among the litany of issues the two sides disagreed on included how to determine the age of American cattle, few of which are identified and tracked from birth to the slaughterhouse. In broad terms, USDA argued cattle below the age of 30 months should not be tested.
Meanwhile, through August Japanese officials debated amongst themselves over loosening the test-all policy. A consensus of sorts was forming around the notion that 20-month-old cattle might not require testing. That was a pivotal change of view for the government.
Toward the end of August, the USDA also produced a surprise of its own.
U.S officials stunned their Japanese counterparts by revealing for the first time they had developed a method to calculate and verify the age of cows in the U.S.--a development that might pave the way for an agreement that would get American beef back into Japan.
In another surprising revelation, a confidential USDA memo said a plan was in the works in which USDA agreed to test cattle less than 24 months old to be shipped to Japan.
In the memo, dated Aug. 31, USDA officials said this agreement "is intended to show sensitivity to Japan's particular situation and reflect our efforts to find a solution [to] this difficult problem. "We still strongly argue that 30 months is the appropriate cut-off age for testing for both scientific and practical reasons. The preponderance of scientific evidence clearly points to 30 months as the appropriate cut-off for testing." The method the U.S. will use to determine if cows are indeed less than 24 months old involves measuring rises in the amount of calcium in the bones, called bone ossification, with electronic sensors. In Japan, there are still doubts over the ability of the U.S. to accurately measure such things.
Beef industry officials say Penn's task in these new talks will be to get results out of a meeting. The Japanese side took a positive move immediately after the Cabinet reshuffle by sending a group for further talks at the expert level with the U.S. in Fort Collins, Colo., (the site of the second working group talks).
Just before the Cabinet moves, BSE was obviously on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's mind as he prepared to meet U.S. President George W. Bush in New York in September during the UN General Assembly. As in earlier meetings, Prime Minister Koizumi and his close ally Bush, talked briefly about BSE. That resulted in speculation that President Bush asked Koizumi to announce an agreement on lifting the ban. In the middle of an U.S. presidential campaign, Koizumi appears to be reluctant to do so.
Penn is reported to be planning trips at this time to China and other parts of Asia. In Japan, he will have to step carefully through Japan's current political minefields when it comes to the subject of BSE. Japan's Diet (parliament) convened Oct. 12 for a 53-day session during which BSE is bound to play a role as negotiations over next year's national budget get underway.
The Japanese press is already reporting stiff opposition within Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to changes in the current test-all cattle policy. Some observers say this is more acting than reality. "Kabuki," is how one put it, a reference to one popular form of Japanese theater.
But Oct. 13, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the leading business daily, reported the ruling Party will be unwilling to "greenlight" the planned easing of Japan's blanket cattle inspection requirements. "The chances are becoming slim that Japan will resume U.S. beef imports this year," the newspaper reported.
Here's where things stand.
The Cabinet-level Food Safety Commission (FSC) has already made public a decision to scrap the strict application of the current law, advocating a looser policy. The debate has led to a proposal by the Agriculture and Health ministries to exempt cattle younger than 21 months from testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy. After testing around 1.2 million cattle a year since October 2001, they concluded that positive results are rare, especially at less than 21 months. (There have been two cases of BSE involving a 23 month and 21 month animal.)
On Oct. 14, ministers will argue that case to a Liberal Democratic Party Committee. At an earlier meeting, the party's subcommittee on BSE-related issues opposed lawmakers from ranch and farm districts fiercely. The biggest opposition came from cattle-raising prefectures, such as the larger northern island of Hokkaido.
MAFF officials say any change would be phased in, with funds provided to continue testing all cattle for a certain amount of time. Subsidies will also be handed out so that localities can keep on "voluntarily" inspecting all cattle. The LDP will pass such measures.
"Obtaining the LDP's endorsement and having the Food Safety Committee deliberate the proposal will be the preconditions for Japan to engage in full-fledged talks with the U.S. on restarting beef imports," says Nihon Keizai.
Even then, the U.S. is likely to face questions on the method for verification of the age of the cattle. Even U.S. beef industry people question their ability to judge the age of their own cattle. Queries from the Japanese government to the beef industry include basic doubts that the U.S. can verify the age of even young cattle--say 16-18 months old--being fattened in feedlots.
"We can only estimate them between one and two months accuracy," says one beef expert.
Talk like that will make it harder for the U.S. delegation. Even optimists reckon the earliest U.S. beef could be on the way to Japan would be after January 1, 2005.
Date: 10/20/04
Copyright 1995-2008. High Plains Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Any republishing of these pages, including electronic reproduction of the editorial archives or classified advertising, is strictly prohibited. If you have questions or comments you can reach us at High Plains Journal 1500 E. Wyatt Earp Blvd., P.O. Box 760, Dodge City, KS 67801 or call 1-800-452-7171. Email: webmaster@hpj.com
 
| |||||||||||||||||||||
