United States and Japanese Beef Trade

I do not refer to BSE as “Mad Cow Disease”, this is merely a term cooked up by the sensational media to grab people’s attention. I cringe when the national media reports on agriculture topics, because they usually don’t understand all that is going on, and this leads them to drawing outlandish conclusions, i.e. mad cow disease and the 7 second clip of the Holstein cow on slick concrete that turned into a 45 second clip and helped scare people and governments around the world. Anyhow on to the subject at hand:

American agriculture lives and dies with world trade, especially the beef industry. Trade agreements between countries not only stimulate economic growth, but they also broaden international markets. However, these agreements don’t always run smoothly, and the U.S. has had its fair share of disagreements with other countries on a number of issues. The most recent issue for the U.S. beef industry has been BSE, which was discovered in Washington State in December 2003. Even though this animal was determined to have come from Canada a short time after the discovery, the reaction in the markets and throughout the world was swift.

According to a study conducted by Kansas State University, the U.S. immediately lost 82 percent of its export market, more than half of that from two markets, Japan and South Korea. In December 2005, Japan reopened its markets to U.S. boneless beef but soon closed trade again after a box of veal exported to Japan was found to contain bones. And not until June 21, 2006, did Japan agree to reopen its market to U.S. beef under two conditions. The first requirement was that Japanese inspectors would be allowed to tour the 35 beef processing plants that were authorized by the USDA to export to Japan, and the second was that no vertical column material would be contained in shipments and would only consist of beef and beef products from cows less than 20 months of age.

When news of this trade agreement reached the beef industry, not everyone was thrilled about the news; but at the same time, a lot of people were just happy to re-establish trade with Japan. Many people, myself included, believed that the under 20-month requirement imposed by the Japanese was a way to get the U.S. ‘s foot in the door, and that future negoations would reflect the international scientific standard of 30 months. The 30-month standard is in reference to the World Organization for Animal Health’s (OIE) definition that cattle that have or are susceptible to BSE are older than 30 months. Anything younger than 30 months will not have BSE, which has been proven by enormous amounts of scientific evidence. But Japan has little room to talk; they have had numerous cases of BSE throughout its national herd, most of which are Holstein cattle. They have even said that they found two supposed BSE positives in Japanese cattle younger than 30 months, which is pretty hard to believe, considering that there is a mountain of scientific evidence going against these findings.

With this being the case, the U.S. can still only export beef from cattle that are 20-month old or younger to Japan. On top of this Japan has sent their inspectors to come over to the U.S. and inspect our beef packing plants to make sure they are up to Japan’s standards. I can see where this may have been an olive branch given to the Japanese by the U.S. to initate trade, but at the same time the U.S. is known for its food safety and is considered the world leader in these matters. Hell, let them come over and inspect all the plants they want to, but to constantly discount science and not accept beef from cattle that is 30 months or younger is hypocritical! Hong Kong has decided to allow beef from cattle younger than 30-months from Japan and they have had many more BSE cases than the U.S., Japan needs to go ahead and drop the 20-month old or younger restriction.

Finally, the OIE has declared that the U.S. is considered a “controlled risk” for BSE, which is just one step away from being considered to be free of BSE. This alone should make countries want to accept U.S. beef on a larger basis, but politics are politics.

This leaves a large portion of the U.S. beef supply that is older than 20 months and is of high quality here in the U.S. or exported to other countries. This is not all that bad, we have a large demand for beef in the U.S., but we stand to gain more money for American farmers and ranchers through our exports, and also gain other benefits from trade and commerce as well.