Standing firm on US beef ban, Tokyo wants a new probe

[dArKeR]

Japan's agriculture minister yesterday called a US probe into the outbreak of mad cow disease incomplete and said his country would not reconsider a six-week ban on American beef until it receives new proposals from Wash-ington for tighter safeguards.

Japan is pressing the US to test all cattle for the disease before slaughter, a measure implemented by Japan's much smaller beef industry after a mad cow scare here two years ago.

The US says blanket testing is unnecessary and would be pro-hibitively expensive, but a series of US agriculture and trade officials sent to Tokyo to persuade Japan to lift an import ban have come away empty handed.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worldbiz/archives/2004/02/16/2003099014

[donsu]

1. Good for Japan - the country that has some sense

it can take up to 12 yrs. after eating contaminated meat for the symptoms to show up.

[tom_paine]

2. Japan should go to the Free World for it's beef

Which eliminates Imperial Amerika...

I have always been a proponent of Free nations working and trading exclusively with each other.

Back when the Old American Republic was a Free Nation, I always thought it bad form to trade with Commie China and so forth.

Of course, Imperial Amerika trading with Commie China is ok now. Birds of a feater and all that.

But Japan should get the hell away from Imperial Amerika, lest the Japenese Empire also revive.