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Japan says banned spinal column found in U.S. beef shipmentTOKYO (AP)--Japan temporarily halted beef shipments from a U.S. processing plant after a spinal column was found in a box of imported beef in violation of a trade accord prohibiting parts believed to pose a risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Japanese officials said. A statement from two government ministries April 23 said Japan informed the U.S. Embassy of the findings. David Marks, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, confirmed that U.S. officials were aware of the incident and said a full investigation would be conducted "to find out how it happened." He added, however, that there was nothing inherently wrong with the product in question. The spinal column was discovered April 21 at a Japanese meat-processing factory during an inspection, said the statement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. It was found in one of 700 boxes shipped from National Beef California L.P., and imported by trading house Itochu Corp., the statement said. Shipments from the U.S.-based company have been halted. Calls to parent company National Beef Packing Co., in Kansas City were not immediately returned. Itochu had sold the meat to Yoshinoya Holdings Co., operator of a fast-food chain that uses U.S. beef for its popular beef bowl dish. The box containing the spinal column was mislabeled and contained a cut of beef that Yoshinoya had not ordered, said a Ministry of Health spokesman who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media. Itochu said in a statement that no products from the 700-box lot, which had been in storage since arriving in Japan in August, have been released into the market. Yoshinoya will continue selling beef bowls as usual, Kyodo News agency reported. Japan imposed a ban on U.S. beef imports in December 2003 after the first case of BSE was found in the United States. The ban was lifted in late 2005, only to be imposed again in January 2006 after inspectors found prohibited animal parts in a veal shipment from New York. The agreement between the two countries states that meat shipped to Japan comes only from cattle age 20 months and younger, which are thought to pose less of a risk of the disease. U.S. exporters must also remove spinal columns, brain tissue and other materials from shipments bound for Japan. U.S. beef imports resumed in July 2006, but sales are a fraction of what they used to be. BSE is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle. In humans, eating meat products contaminated with the illness is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal malady.
Date: 4/29/08
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