Inspection for US Beef to Begin
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
Only five out of 57 Korean importers have asked for their shipments of U.S. beef to be inspected, according to the National Veterinary Research & Quarantine Service, Thursday.
Quarantine inspections on U.S. beef imports will restart Friday, following a nine-month import ban, after the government published its import protocols in its gazette.
The check-up process was supposed to start one day earlier, but protests caused delays as hundreds of protestors and unionists blocked warehouses in Gyeonggi Province and Busan, where a total of 5,300 tons of beef are in frozen storage.
At least one protestor was reportedly injured as police tried to disperse demonstrators at a warehouse in Busan.
The inspected beef is expected to go on sale next week.
Any bone found during the inspections will get the shipment containing it sent back to the United States as it would be a violation of previous import regulations.
About 3 percent of American imports will be sampled, three times higher than Australian or New Zealand beef. The inspection rate will be leveled if no serious problem occurs over the next six months.
It will be some time before beef processed according to new sanitary standards arrives here.
``It will take two or three more weeks for the U.S. government and exporters to set up the quality system assessment (QSA) program for age verification as agreed to last week,'' an official of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said.