The government's Food Safety Commission finalized a report Thursday declaring U.S. and Canadian beef from cattle younger than 21 months will be as safe as domestic beef, as long as the U.S. adheres to certain conditions. </PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>The completion of the report secures the way for U.S. imports to resume as early as year's end.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Government officials said they will give the OK to U.S. and Canadian beef imports by Monday, lifting a two-year ban that has been in place since the first discovery in December 2003 of mad cow disease in the U.S. in a cow born in Canada.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Meat from cows slaughtered after the ban is lifted could reach Japanese restaurants and supermarkets by month's end, if importers choose to bring the beef in by air.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>The bulk of the food services industry, however, is opting for sea transport, which takes six to eight weeks. Fast food chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. has said it will take up to two months before it begins serving U.S. beef.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Thursday's report, drafted last month, lists the conditions that need to be met for imports, including checks to ensure slaughtered cattle are 20 months old or younger, and that high risk parts, including the brain and spinal cord, are removed.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>These parts are thought to contain high concentrations of prions, the infectious agent in bovine spongiform encephalopathy.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>'Please understand that this –
is just one step. The real test is still to come, of Japan's ability to check (that) the U.S. is implementing precautions" against BSE, said Yasuhiro Yoshikawa, who heads the prion research group under the commission that drafted Thursday's report.
"The report was based on a number of preconditions, such as safety measures to be implemented in the U.S. in the future," said Yoshikawa, also professor of agricultural life science at Tokyo University. "There were moments when members (of the panel) talked about refusing to complete the report."
In the future, he said the team will not conduct risk analysis for scenarios in which over 50 percent of the preconditions are hypothetical.
A team of specialists will leave for the U.S. this week to verify that U.S. meat packing plants are using proper procedures to keep tainted meat out of exports, an agriculture ministry official said.
