Taipei - Taipei said on Tuesday that Tokyo had approved plans by one Taiwan food processor to export cooked pork to Japan -- the first such sale since a feedlot epidemic prompted Tokyo to ban Taiwan pork imports in March 1997.
Pork exports to Japan had been a US$1.5 billion a year business for Taiwan's food sector. Since the ban Japn has turned mainly to North America and Europe to make up the shortfall.
A senior Taiwan Council of Agriculture official said Japan had given approval for Chin Kung Co to start shipments as early as July 17, but added that the company was likely to be the only legal exporter in the near-term as few others could meet Japan's strict sanitation rules.
“Chin Kung is the only firm to have applied for permission and it will take a while before other local firms can meet Japan's safety requirements,” the farm official said.
A Chin Kung executive said the firm in Taiwan's southern Pingtung county had invested over NT$100 million ($3 million) to renovate its pork processing plant to meet Japan's food safety code. The plant can produce 30 tonnes of cooked and processed pork a month.
“We have had to build five restaurants in our factory just to separate workers handling cooked products from workers processing raw meat,” the executive said.
“We also altered and changed our equipment so all of our pork products will be cooked to above 70 degrees Celsius for an extended period, as Japan's policy requires,” he said.
Taiwan farm officials said thoroughly cooked pork handled under strict procedures could be guaranteed free of the foot-and-mouth contamination that all but wiped out Taiwan's once-lucrative pork export market.
Despite getting Tokyo's green light, the Chin Kung executive was sceptical about the market potential for exports of “well cooked” pork products in Japan.
“The question now is whether Japanese consumers will accept such pork cooked and processed using strict methods,” he said.
“The flavour will be OK for some products, but there are problems for products like ham or bacon,” he added.
Before the hog epidemic, Japan imported 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes of pork worth about US$1.5 billion a year from Taiwan, with processed pork accounting for only about 10 percent.
Taiwan's farm council on March 20, 1997, voluntarily banned all exports of fresh, frozen and processed pork due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease - - a deadly and highly contagious disease that affects livestock.
Japan and South Korea -- Taiwan's main pork export markets -- banned Taiwan imports indefinitely to protect their herds.
Taiwan lifted the export ban in April 1997 but obliged exporters to obtain permits from importing countries.
Authorities destroyed nearly four million of Taiwan's 14 million hogs to stem the epidemic, which they say has been controlled with only scattered new cases reported.
Local pork prices have been sluggish since the epidemic, which turned public opinion against the island's “sick pigs.”
Local pork prices had crashed to below T$20 per kg from T$46 before the epidemic.
On Tuesday, wholesale pork was quoted at T$43.5 per kg in Taipei and T$40.2 in the southern city of Kaohsiung.
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