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Kill the T-bone to save the
beef
By Richard Hanson
TOKYO
- Japan and the United States are likely to hold a new
round of mad cow talks here next week, and insiders say
that a tentative deal has been hammered out. If all goes
well, Japan could lift its two-month-old ban on US beef
exports. But there are still a lot of "ifs".
Even if all goes well, Japanese will no longer
have the pleasure of eating US T-bone steaks because the
tenderloin and striploin cuts contain dorsal root
ganglia - a part of the cattle's nervous system that
could be infected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), a fatal brain disease. Japan wants the parts
banned, and the US appears to agree sources say, opening
the way for more, less expensive cuts of meat.
The talks would, in effect, kill the T-bone to
save the beef. And a Tokyo cartoonist got it right.
The Asahi Shimbun, a liberal Japanese newspaper,
ran a cartoon this week portraying an American cowboy
riding a bull named "Sale" and brandishing a six gun on
his way past a "beef bowl" shop. A sign in the window
had "Beef" crossed out. The gun smoke balloon caption
read: "Shoot the BSE tests."
The cartoonist may
have just hit the bull's eye when it comes to mad cow
disease. It looks as though Japan may have agreed to
back down on its demand that every single Japan-bound
carcass be tested for BSE.
There is no official
confirmation for any of this, but sources close to the
talks tell Asia Times Online that a deal is in the
offing. A US delegation is expected to arrive on Sunday.
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, in
Tokyo for wider talks, said on Wednesday that he and
Agriculture Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei had greed to work
together toward an early resumption of beef trade and
"talk about possible steps to reopen the market on a
scientific basis". Zoellick is on a nine-country tour.
Two key words: concession and
compromise
US and Japanese farm officials, after
weeks of glaring at each other with growing bilateral
hostility over Tokyo's mad cow disease ban on American
beef imports, may be about to resort to those
little-used but precious words: concession and
compromise. And if both sides compromise and make
concessions, they could salvage a shattered Asia-Pacific
market for American beef.
This may mean the
death of the T-bone, but concession and compromises -
constructive diplomacy - will be the key to re-opening
America's international beef trade. Japan was once the
biggest market for US beef exports, but exports were
halted by the December 23, 2003, disclosure of the US'
first case of mad cow disease. Currently, over 30
countries ban US beef imports.
However, Asia
Times Online has learned that the concessions are aimed
at jump-starting resumed US exports of beef. Facing the
prospect of a prolonged and damaging deadlock between
the two countries, secret meetings in Washington among
influential members of the beef industry recently
hammered together a far-reaching set of concessions.
These have been shown to senior officials of US
Department of Agriculture (USDA), including Secretary
Ann Veneman. In the next few days, a USDA delegation
headed by J B Penn, undersecretary for farm and foreign
agricultural services, will meet its counterparts in
Japan's ministries of foreign affairs, agriculture,
forestry and fisheries, health, labor and welfare.
An earlier meeting in late January ended without
progress, alarming some people in and out of the
government who fear that the longer the ban lasts the
harder it will be for the US beef industry to recapture
its place in the Asian beef market.
Australian beef into the breach
In the
meantime, that will put pressure on the market to
increase supplies from Australia, which was already the
largest exporter of beef to Japan before the US mad cow
problem arose. That would mean an investment in gearing
up Australia's beef farm infrastructure. If Australian
farmers did that, they would likely demand assurances
that their additional market presence would be protected
from a sudden return of US beef to the Japanese market.
All this makes it imperative that Japan and the
US go much further in resolving problems than in
January. Key US and Japanese interest groups close to
the beef industry will need to apply pressure for a
resolution. On the Japanese side, some government
officials have already been trying to smooth the path
for the return of US imports.
As a result, the
US is prepared to accept Japan's own strict list of
forbidden animal parts prone to BSE. These are known in
the trade as specified risk materials, or SRM, and they
include the brain, spinal cord and other internal
organs. This affects the T-bone cut.
Japan's
critical concession would be to accept only exported
American beef around 18-24 months old - without a strict
requirement that they be tested for BSE at the time of
slaughter. The rationale is that young cattle are less
prone to be carrying the disease, which has been linked
to a similar fatal disease in humans.
Up to to
this point, Japan has been insisting that the US
strictly test all or virtually all cattle for BSE. After
Japan discovered its own first case in 2001, it
instituted rigorous testing of every animal slaughtered
in Japan for domestic consumption.
The US
rejected that comprehensive testing requirement as too
onerous, unnecessary and not scientifically justified.
Before any revival of US beef exports, the two
sides must agree that Japan's testing requirement can be
waived. In order to achieve that degree of confidence,
the US will be expected to demonstrate convincing
science evidence that the category of 18-month-old
cattle are at low risk for infection.
Agreement still needed on testing
waiver
Reliable sources close to the talks
confirm that Japan would be amenable to accepting a
credible presentation of the scientific argument about
the safety of the younger beef. "There will either have
to be good science, or the proof of no abnormal prions
[the proteins associated with BSE] through testing,"
said one official involved in assuring the safety of
Japan's meat. "There is no zero risk." Some influential
experts in the academic world share that view.
About the T-bone. For the first time, US beef
would comply with a Japanese ban on the dorsal root
ganglia (DRG). That means that along with DRG goes one
of beef's most popular cuts, the T-bone steak - the
prized tenderloin and striploin parts of beef.
Instead, the beef industry will have to settle
for a chance to ship lesser grades of beef. That would
be fine for much of the Japanese market. It would help
solve the problem faced by a large number of Japanese
eateries that specialize in US beef, such as the famous
Yoshinoya chain, whose trademark "beef bowl" officially
was dropped from the menu on Wednesday this week as its
stocks of American meat ran out.
The core issue,
however, is testing for BSE, a practice applied to hilt
in Japan but virtually ignored in the US before it
discovered its own first mad cow case. After Japan found
its first case of BSE in September 2001, the Diet or
parliament immediately passed legislation mandating
testing for BSE of all of the 1.2 million domestic
cattle slaughtered each year. Most other countries with
BSE consider Japan's policy excessive.
But, in
Japan, the government considers the "test-all" policy it
adopted to be the political price for restoring consumer
confidence in purchasing beef. Non-BSE-infected beef
producing countries are not required to test.
Canadian beef also banned
Canadian
beef also was banned. Canada, once Japan's third-largest
supplier of beef, discovered its first BSE case in the
province of Alberta. Perhaps coincidentally, the first
BSE case in the US, found in Washington State, was
traced to Alberta where the animal was born. The US and
Canadian beef markets were considered almost as one
before the BSE scourge hit.
One by-product of
the acceptance of a new set of standards - concession
and compromises included - could be the extension of
these standards to other countries with cases of BSE.
The truth is that BSE is not a bilateral disease -
unlike trade frictions.
On Monday, the USDA said
it has ended its investigation into the first US case of
mad cow disease, although it was unable to locate all
the cattle shipped to the US from Canada along with the
infected animal.
''We feel very confident the
remaining animals, the ones we have not been able to
positively identify, represent little risk,'' Ron
DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian, said at a
news conference. DeHaven will be part of the meeting in
Japan, and most likely the one who will have to argue
the US case for science and safety.
Whatever the
arguments, the death of the T-bone will be mourned.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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