By Kwaak Je-yup
Safety concerns about U.S. beef may have stayed off the political radar for the past few years, but they have yet to be erased from people’s minds.
Even the phenomenal market share growth belies the true public opinion, which is mixed at best.
The importation of U.S. beef, the resumption of which was met by tens of thousands of protesters in 2008, does not seem to generate the spark of yesteryear.
While Australia still leads the Korean beef market by a comfortable margin, U.S. beef has made a trouble-free return on the table, aided by last winter’s foot-and-mouth outbreak that wiped out at least 150,000 cows in Korea.
Numbers tell the story best: the market share for U.S. beef has grown from 20 percent in 2008 to 37 percent this year.
Even after the National Assembly ratified the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement Tuesday, considerably fewer people, in the thousands, took to the streets to express their disapproval of the majority Grand National Party’s unilateral decision rather than the possibility of contracting lethal diseases by consuming tax-free U.S. beef.
The assuagement of fear seems far from complete, nonetheless, with public and distributor opinions still expressing doubts.
In Korea, U.S. beef is still equated with affordability and not high quality, so much so that many distributors switch the origin label to something else, often Australia, which can take a higher price tag.
Most five-star hotels still serve steaks from Down Under, and none of the top three department stores carry U.S. beef in their food halls to distance themselves from the “cheap alternative” image.
“We do not sell beef produced in America and currently have no future plans to do so, due to consumer concerns about its safety,” said a Shinsegae Department Store spokesman.
The sales volume is evenly split between Korean and Australian beef at these high-end butchers.
Even the American Chamber of Commerce, a non-profit organization that promotes American business interests in Korea, showed signs of uncertainty by declining to endorse U.S. meat upon request Thursday, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
The safety concerns about consuming U.S. beef, which came from a 2003 case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more popularly known as mad cow disease, is unfounded according to Yang Ji-hae, director of the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) in Seoul, which promotes beef and pork from the United States.
Imports of U.S. beef were banned after the outbreak.
“There is a lot of inaccurate information circulating,” said Yang. “America has the highest level of animal welfare in the world when it comes to farms. Quality control may be voluntary but very strict.”
She added that the shocking images of cattle locked up inside cages are of dairy cows; those slaughtered for human consumption live outside to roam freely, often grazing on grass for the initial year and then fed grain after.
“It costs more to build roofs over their heads,” she said. “Actually, it’s the Korean cattle that are often locked inside.”
“It is in the farmers’ best interests to let cows live with some freedom, as stress negatively impacts the taste of the meat,” she argued.
E-Mart, one of the country’s largest supermarket chains and under the same corporate umbrella as its more upscale cousin Shinsegae Department Store, sells U.S. beef and “a lot of it,” said its spokesman.
“I don’t worry about it at all, really,” said a grocery shopper at Shinsegae’s Gangnam branch when asked about U.S. beef. “I ate it before (2003) and I think it tastes better.”
Advocates of U.S. beef have the same argument, saying it is not just a more affordable alternative to the prized local rival but a product of superior quality.
Yang and other USMEF staff have aimed to support that notion with the introduction of dry-aged steak, a time-consuming technique that was first developed for preservation purposes in the 60s. Sellers have their beef hung to dry in a temperature-controlled area for up to a month.
Ian Kim, owner of GOO STK 528 restaurants and first adopter of the specialty steak in Korea, said he “tested,” or tasted, all the beef he had access to from around the world before deciding to import the American kind at the height of the demonstrations in 2008.
Since opening in early 2009, his two restaurants are always full, with chaebol businessmen and A-list celebrities seated next to each other.
“Everyone said I would go out of business,” he said.
Now the popularity has convinced even the family restaurant chain VIPS to sell U.S. dry-aged steak.
But there is not a single mention of its American origin in any press kits or other promotional material.
And with the exception of dry-aged steak, all other beef on offer is Australian.