Brownfield Network, USA

South Korea accepts U.S. beef

by Peter Shinn

27 April 2007

For the first time in over three years, South Korea accepted a shipment of U.S. beef Friday. South Korea had rejected three previous shipments of U.S. beef since officially re-opening its market in September of 2006.

But a pending free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S. appears to have motivated South Korea to actually begin accepting American beef. And National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Governmental Relations Jay Truitt told Brownfield if South Korea continues to relax its restrictions on U.S. beef, the U.S. beef industry will back the pending FTA.

"From our perspective, this is a real step forward," Truitt said. "We look forward to the next several steps so that we get back to a normalized trade, and then the result of that, obviously, will be us pushing for a free trade agreement passage with South Korea."

Like most in the U.S. beef industry and the Bush administration, Truitt has high hopes for the impact of an expected decision by the full World Organization for Animal Health in late May to classify the U.S. as a country at controlled for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). According to Truitt, that classification should swiftly pave the way for a complete re-opening of the South Korean market to U.S. beef and move NCBA from a fierce opponent of the U.S.-South Korean FTA to a vocal backer.

"It’s our expectation by the end of the year, hopefully, we will have trade firmly reestablished with South Korea, essentially across the entire spectrum," said Truitt. "And that would free at least NCBA up, and I believe some of the other groups as well, to put us firmly in aggressive support of that free trade agreement, which is a good package, by the way."

According to Truitt, the U.S. beef trade relationship with Japan also appears to be looking up. Japan’s prime minister had hamburgers with President Bush Friday at Camp David. And Truitt said he’s optimistic Japan will ease its current age restrictions on beef from U.S. cattle this year, especially in light of the expected controlled BSE-risk designation from the World Organization for Animal Health next month. But Truitt said that’s not the most important reason officials from Japan and South Korea appear more willing to ease their restrictions against U.S. beef.

"We see some progress and have had some good signals out of there," Truitt said. "The most important factor being that consumers around the world are getting hungry for beef."