Japan Suspends Beef Imports From U.S. Plant
Japan has suspended US beef imports after discovering a illegal shipment:
A pack of beef, imported for the major Japanese restaurant chain Yoshinoya from the Californian plant of National Beef, contained spinal tissue, the agriculture ministry said.
Japan in July 2006 agreed to resume US beef imports on condition the cattle were not more than 20 months old at the time of slaughter, with brains, spinal cords and other risky parts removed.
The illegal shipment was among 700 packs or 17 tonnes of beef imported through Japanese trading company Itochu last August, the ministry said in a statement.
The spinal tissue was discovered on Tuesday at a Yoshinoya meat processing plant in Tokyo’s suburbs.
“The beef in question has not been sent to the market,” said Takashi Himeda, an official in charge of food safety at the ministry.
It was the first time that a risky cut has been found in a US beef shipment since Japan resumed imports, he added.
Bloomberg has reported that a shipping error caused a California-based plant of the National Beef Packing Co. to send the banned beef to Japan.
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I’ll try to stick to Aussie beef.
Even as an American who voted for Bush, I think this is one of the many issues that the US govt. has dropped the ball on, especially in the health/science field.
I assume the argument is that going to 100% testing and mass culls would be expensive, and the ratio of lives saved per dollar spent would be very, very high [but since we are stil waiting on the long-term results in the UK, the stats are just educated guesses]
Whereas just telling ranchers to please be more careful about not feeding cows to each other and hoping it just goes away is the much cheaper option.
So, it seems they are treating it like a pollutant, or a pesticide. Trying to totally reduce such a contaminant down to 0.000000 ppm is ridiculously expensive [and impossible], and might save 0.00001 extra lives per year doing so, thus the math of dollars per life saved, while cold, is necessary, or we’d bakrupt ourselves trying to be perfectly safe.
But BSE is a somewhat-communicable DISEASE. It should be, and can be, totally eliminated. I’d gladly pay 10 cents extra per burger to get rid of BSE, and I’m poor.
Let’s remember though that BSE has been found in Japanese cows, too. And Japanese beef is just as a much of a gamble as US beef, unless you TRUST people in the Japanese food industry. HAHAHAHHAAA!
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>”Japanese beef is just as a much of a gamble as US beef.”
Not really. All the cows that are processed for food in Japan are tested free of BSE. In the US, it is practically impossible to test cows due to the pressure from Department of Agriculture.
Remember, Japan once banned the US beef, not because a BSE cow was found in the US, but because none of the cows were tested in the US.
And what is outrageous is the reason why US government refuses to test cows. They are not worried about the test cost. They are worried about the huge number of BSE contaminated cows that they will find once they start testing.
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I remember a way back when the 20-20 or some other TV program reported about the horse racetrack in US where several people working and gambling there regularly eating burgers at the cafeteria had gotten BSE. Since I haven’t heard any more about that incidence, they must have tucked it under the carpet.
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Japan should banned all beef from US .
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The title of the story is misleading – only shipments from that particular plant have been stopped.
Thumbs up to Yoshigyu – they could have swept it under the carpet, after all, it threatens their livelihood – but they did the right thing and reported it.
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It is all a ploy for Japan to get cheaper U.S. beef.
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I don’t think Japanese should announce any irregularity of the beef imported from US when they found. They should process them to make frozen meals like ‘Sukiyaki Bento’ and quietly export them to US to see what’ll happen.
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It’s a shame that American firms EXPORT beef (risky or not) when Americans go hungry for lack of beef! Where is our BORDER PATROL to keep such exports from being exported in the first place?????
Japan (and ALL OTHER NATIONS) SHOULD ban US beef– it would actually be better for AMERICA, since Americans would eat REAL American beef for a change…. For example, why does all corned beef — no matter what brand– sold in 12 oz cans, etc. seem to come to the US from, of all places, BRAZIL? Why can’t we come up with a way to use this stuff that Japan,etc. doesn’t want– or probably need– and make corned beef with it back in AMERICA?!?!! I guarantee you– we’d eat it, no questions asked!
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