US makes no specific request for easing Japan’s beef import curbs
Kyodo | Thursday, September 16, 2010
US makes no specific request for easing Japan’s beef import curbs
TOKYO, Sep. 16, 2010 (Kyodo News International) — The United States made no specific request for relaxing Japan’s beef import restrictions over mad cow disease at a two-day bilateral working-level meeting that ended in San Francisco on Wednesday, Japanese officials said Thursday.
Japanese and U.S. officials explained their respective tests and safety measures for preventing the disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, at the meeting, which was the first one in three years to deal with the relaxation of the Japanese beef import curbs, the officials said.
Japan has restricted beef imports from the United States since the first U.S. case of the disease was discovered in 2003.
The two countries had suspended their beef trade talks in August 2007 due to their wide difference over how to relax the Japanese import restrictions.
In April, however, then Japanese agriculture minister Hirotaka Akamatsu and his U.S. counterpart Tom Vilsack at a meeting in Tokyo agreed to resume such talks.
At the just-ended meeting, the two sides agreed to meet again, though they fell short of fixing a specific schedule for the next meeting, the officials said.
