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Japan asks "Where's the beef?"

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Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Japanese beef consumers have presented a petition to bring back American beef.

Shortages of beef in Japan prompted consumers to submit a petition with about 1.19 million signatures to Japan's Agriculture Minister Yoshinobu Shimamura on Tuesday. The petition was presented by a group led by Takashi Sakamoto, president of a chain of used book outlets.

Japan has banned imports of U.S. beef for 15 months, citing concerns about mad cow disease after authorities discovered a cow with the disease in the United States.

Japanese health and agriculture ministers said they would ask their country's food safety commission to approve lifting the ban.

"We will ask the commission to decide if resuming U.S. beef imports is safe based on safety measures taken in the U.S.," said health minister Makoto Kanie.

Analyst Kazuhiko Saito says this may cause a delay "until later this year", telling Bloomberg, "The Commission has been very slow on reviewing domestic mad cow tests and will also be slow to review the U.S. beef import plans."

U.S. lawmakers and diplomats have pressed Japan to re-open their market, and some Washington lawmakers have even threatened Japan with sanctions should beef imports not resume soon. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brought up the matter earlier this month during her visit to Japan.

So far, the Japan Food Safety Commission has only taken the step of loosening inspection rules, such that mad cow testing is not required for all imported live cattle.

Japan has dealt with 14 cases of mad cow disease of their own.

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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

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Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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