By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter

An interesting issue surrounding the U.S. beef imports is what the Lee Myung-bak administration's stance will be toward the legal battles with which the U.S. government is struggling in order to block meat processing companies from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, Seoul tackled the issue in talks to resume U.S. beef imports, according to some officials at the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

One case in point is Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a meat processor based in Arkansas, Kansas, which produced the first batch of U.S. beef exported to Korea after the three-year import ban was lifted in 2006. A U.S. government lawyer told a federal appeals court that Creekstone Farms Premium Beef shouldn't be allowed to test beef for mad-cow disease on its own as it could hurt the U.S. cattle industry.

In his argument to a court hearing over the weekend, Justice Department attorney Eric Fleisig-Greene said Creekstone Farms is ``creating a false assurance'' because the test Creekstone wants to use can't show that meat is completely free of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease.

The Bush administration made its request on Friday to the court that is considering overturning a ruling that allowed Creekstone Farms to test all its beef for mad cow disease.

According to U.S. consumer advocates, including the Minnesota-based Organic Consumers Association (OCA), Creekstone Farms wanted to assure customers that its cattle were safe to eat by testing every cow for mad cow disease. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has continued to block private companies from selling disease-testing kits to Creekstone, arguing that there was no significant mad cow disease problem in the country, the OCA said.

``Korea raised the (Creekstone-USDA) case in former talks to resume U.S. beef imports in September 2006,'' said an official at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, who was one of the negotiators during the Roh government. He also said U.S. officials just replied that they follow global standards in regulations on cattle examinations.

Under the Lee administration, there has been no ministry official who highlighted the issue of voluntary mad cow disease tests among U.S. meatpackers in their interviews or briefings before the media.

``I believe the USDA's blockade for some meat processors' proposal to extend mad cow disease testing is to block fatal damages to the agriculture industry (from a possibility of more BSE detection),'' said Byun Hye-jin, a leader at the Korean Federation of Medical Groups for Health Rights.

Critics say the U.S. agriculture industry is the No. 2 political funding source for the Bush administration.

Following the detection of a bone fragment in 2006, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef was banned from being imported to Korea.

On Sunday, the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, also known as Minbyun, urged the National Assembly to conduct an investigation into the Lee government's ``insolvent'' beef talks with the U.S.

kys@koreatimes.co.kr