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Today 8/14/2006 7:10:00 AM


South Korea Close To Agreement With US On Beef Imports

SEOUL (AP)--South Korea and the United States are nearing an agreement to resume imports of American beef suspended over fears of mad cow disease, a government official said Monday. "We are in the final stage of negotiations," said Park Hyun-chool of the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry's livestock bureau.

Park gave no time frame, saying only that the market would open after the United States addresses South Korean concerns over how beef at U.S. slaughterhouses is processed. South Korea was the third-largest foreign market for American beef after Japan and Mexico when it shut its doors in December 2003, when the U.S. reported its first case of mad cow disease.

The government agreed in January to allow imports of beef from American cattle younger than 30 months, but the reopening has stalled over measures to ensure meat safety.

South Korea wants U.S. beef processed separately from foreign beef in U.S. facilities. It also wants equipment used on older cows to not be used to process the younger ones. Officials in South Korea believe the younger cattle are safer because they were born after the U.S. took anti-mad cow measures.

Scientists believe the illness - formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy - spreads when farmers feed cattle recycled meat and bones from infected animals.

The sickness is thought to cause the fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Sales of U.S. beef in Japan resumed last week for the first time since January after Tokyo announced on July 27 that it was easing its ban.
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