South Korean consumers are increasingly worried about the safety of U.S. beef imports that have repeatedly contained banned parts. The latest jitters hit the country Thursday when the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry suspended quarantine inspections of all beef from America over mad-cow concerns. The ministry said it had discovered a box of vertebral columns, designated as ``specified risk material'' that could potentially cause mad cow disease, in an 18.7-ton shipment from the United States.
No doubt food safety is emerging as one of the important global issues. We remember that the U.S. has strongly condemned China for exporting food products containing harmful materials. The Chinese authorities executed Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the food and drug safety agency, last month after being convicted of taking bribes from pharmaceutical firms. The execution was seen as Beijing's strong will to ensure food and drug safety at home and abroad.
The U.S. has failed to meet export standards 15 times since last October when Korea partially reopened its market after it banned American beef imports in December 2003 over the outbreak of mad cow disease. How could the U.S. continue to violate the bilateral standards in which it agreed to ship only boneless meat from cattle under 30 months old? It is quite regrettable that the U.S. has not made any sincere efforts to prevent the repetition of such violations.
Korean quarantine officials sent back U.S. beef imports four times between October and December last year because they contained bone fragments and the excessive dioxin levels. This year, American meatpackers shipped beef with short ribs to Korea seven times. They also exported mislabeled beef for U.S. domestic consumption three times. The U.S. side seemed to have only tried to find excuses for the violations without taking bold steps to correct its loose inspection system. Every time Washington officials attributed the violations to meatpackers' simple mistakes.
The U.S. inaction proves that America is applying double standards to its foreign trade. It is very strict on goods imported into the country, while overlooking safety standards for products to be shipped to other countries. What's more annoying is the remarks by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. In response to the latest case, he said only six out of about 600,000 boxes of beef to Korea have problems. ``So you could see, this has really worked remarkably well. I would just be very bold in saying that kind of number whether you're dealing with Kias or Toyotas or beef is a very, very strong number,'' he said.
His saying indicates that the U.S. has no intention of rectifying its mistakes. Johanns said the real solution to the problem is to go to standards of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). ``This would not even be an issue if we were at OIE standards,'' he said. He claimed the vertebral column from an animal under 30 months of age is within OIE standards. His stance shows that the U.S. is only interested in opening the Korean market wider to its beef, while not respecting the bilateral agreement on beef trade.
American lawmakers have already threatened to reject a free trade agreement (FTA) signed by the both countries in June, if South Korea does not comply with a U.S. demand for a full market opening to American beef. Korean farmers and anti-FTA activists criticized Seoul government for taking the lukewarm step of halting the inspection of U.S. beef imports over the spinal bone case in a bid to avoid the threat. They said the Roh Moo-hyun administration should have imposed a total ban on American beef until the U.S. takes scrupulous measures to ensure beef safety.
Washington officials should realize that they might succeed in forcing Seoul to completely open its beef market, but that they cannot win back Korean consumers' confidence in U.S. beef. And Korean policymakers must make efforts to protect sovereign consumer rights to safe beef without yielding to mounting trade pressure from the U.S.