South Korea sends inspection team to evaluate US beef safety

The nine-member team, featuring government officials, representatives from local consumer advocacy g…

The nine-member team, featuring government officials, representatives from local consumer advocacy groups, and academicians, will visit slaughterhouses, dairy farms and meatpacking plants in US, to evaluate the safety to US beef.

Following the ten-day tour, the team will return to South Korea and give recommendations to the government.

This move comes after a new case of mad cow disease was confirmed in a dairy cow in California on 23 April, which led to growing concerns about the safety of food imports in South Korea.

However, the South Korean government noted that it would not impose the ban, but instead would increase the number of quarantine inspections on US beef from 3% to 50%.

Senior press secretary Choe Geum-nak said that judging from the information the government has collected so far, it believes stricter quarantine inspections are sufficient.

Currently, South Korea only imports beef from US cattle less than 30 months, with all specified risk materials (SRMs) - parts of animal capable of transmitting mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - removed.

The country, which imported 107,000 tons of beef last year, had banned US beef imports in 2003 following the outbreak of mad cow disease; however, it resumed imports in 2008.