By Lee Hyo-sik
A Korean inspection team in the United States checking on the safety of U.S. beef held a series of meetings with officials at the Department of Agriculture, Tuesday, to determine the protocol for their visit.
The nine-member fact-finding team, which arrived in Washington, D.C., Monday (local time), plan to visit the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, to look at the results of an epidemiological study of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) found in a dairy cow from a California farm last month.
They also sought to visit the farm, but were told the owner does not want them on his land, out of concern that such a visit may tarnish its image.
The team will tour a livestock feed plant that provided feed to the problematic farm, as well as a slaughterhouse that handles animals in the area.
“We will continue to make efforts to find ways of visiting and inspecting the farm at issue. But if we cannot do that, we will seek alternative ways to learn how the dairy cow contracted mad cow disease,” said an official at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
He said the government will not disclose the itinerary of the Korean inspectors.
“We need to create an environment where investigators can best perform their duties. So, we decided not to release details of their mission in advance,” the official said.
“But to inform the public in a timely manner, we will release what they did and where they were at our daily briefing.”
The inspectors face an uphill battle in their mission as they face a range of obstacles. Among others, they have not obtained consent for an onsite inspection from the owner of the California farm where the BSE stricken cow was from. The case is the first in the U.S. for six years and the fourth ever.
Since the mad cow disease case was revealed on April 24, beef consumption here has plummeted.
The agriculture ministry said Tuesday that sales of domestic and imported beef at 1,065 major retail outlets dropped 6.5 percent and 12.4 percent respectively from April 24 to 29, compared to a week earlier. Sales of U.S. beef plunged 52.3 percent as retailers removed it from their shelves.
Despite growing calls from civic groups and political parties for the halt of American beef imports, the government has refused to do so.
It said it will not stop importing or halt quarantine inspections of U.S. beef but promised to take more measures to secure the safety of the products by inspecting more than 50 percent of the meat entering the country.
BSE is a lethal disease in cattle that can trigger the human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), a fatal brain disorder. vCJD was first detected in 1995 in the United Kingdom and has claimed many lives worldwide. Korean people worry about contracting the disease.