041105 Japan Deal Offers Hope To Beef Producers

Tokyo, Japan - A recent thawing by the Japanese government on American beef exports bodes well for an eventual resumption of full live cattle trade between the United States and Canada, according to Alberta Beef Producers finance chairman Erik Butters.

"It's good news for us on two fronts," said Butters, who runs a cow-calf operation northwest of Cochrane.

"Japan has committed to our industry and to the federal government that they will approve Canadian beef in the same timeframe and under the same conditions as they approve American beef.

"And when the Americans can resume trade with Japan, that makes it more politically doable for them to resume trade with Canada." Japan agreed to a partial easing of a 10-month-old ban on U.S. beef imports on Oct. 23, after three days of talks in Tokyo with U.S. officials.

Japanese officials confirmed the country would accept U.S. beef from cows 20 months or younger, the age group considered at lowest risk for contracting the brain- wasting disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Japan was the most lucrative beef export market for the U.S. prior to the ban last December. Yet it only accounted for four per cent of Canada's market prior to May 20, 2003, when a lone case of BSE threw the cattle industry into havoc.

Prior to the BSE crisis, 32 per cent of Alberta's beef production was sold to the U.S. and nine per cent to other countries, mainly Japan, South Korea and Mexico.

In other developments on the BSE issue, 16 University of Alberta researchers, armed with $41-million in funds, have banded together to form a research facility investigating prion-borne diseases, including BSE, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's Syndrome.

Dr. Andy Greenshaw, associate vice president of research, said studies conducted at the new centre will examine BSE from a wide variety of disciplines.

"This centre is the first cohesive group of researchers who have stood up and said they are going to tackle this," he said.

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