If Japanese want beef less than 20 months old, their own Waygu beef would not qualify because their process for feeding necesitates feeding them to three and four year olds. So I asssume they must test all these animals as well as those coming from Australia. It seems illogical to me that they would not take older animals from US if they were tested. If this were the case then USDA and NCBA really screwed producers by not letting them test. If this were not the case then we'd have a case against Japan for setting up illegal tradre barriers and could pursue the issue by imposing tarrifs on Japanese products, because they would be imposing a higher standard on us than they do on themselves seeing as how they have BSE themselves. Correctl? Then why is our govt. not protecting our interests in trade?