Beef Export Verification

[Mike]

Correspondence from the US Embassy to the Japs concerning guidelines for the (BEV) program. They may have details worked out by now:

Age Verification

As outlined in the Joint Press Release between the U.S. and Japanese Governments, beef exported to Japan is limited to animals that are 20 months or younger at the time of slaughter. This age verification will be conducted by USDA�fs Agricultural Marketing Service under a Beef Export Verification system that using two criteria: animal production records or physiological age.

Some beef cattle are traceable to live animal production records which indicate that they are 20 months of age or younger at the time of slaughter. Records that will be used to verify this requirement by the US Government must meet at least one of the following criteria:


a) Individual Animal Age Verification
b) Group Age Verification
c) Insemination Age Verification
d) USDA Process Verified Animal Identification and Data Collection Services

Since record based age verification alone would allow only extremely limited quantities of trade to resume, a second form of age verification is needed. Traditional physiological methods of age verification, such as dentition, are not valid in this case because of their inaccuracy at the 20-month age level. Therefore, the US proposed, and it was agreed, that grading and quality attributes will be used for verifying physiological age of carcasses 20 months of age or younger. This carcass grading system, once it objectively demonstrates that it can verify physiological age to evaluate carcasses to be 20 months of age or younger, will be used as a method to satisfy the BEV program requirement.




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[Mike]

Yep, here are the details:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/lsg/arc/arc1030.pdf