• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

South Korea eases

Sandhusker

Well-known member
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea said Thursday that it would lower its quarantine standards this month over banned bone fragments in American beef shipments, paving the way for the resumption of U.S. beef imports.

South Korea - once America's third-largest overseas beef market - notified the United States of the plan during negotiations in Washington on Tuesday, and the United States did not oppose it, the South's Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

The news helped to push cattle futures prices to a record in Chicago trading. Cattle futures for April delivery rose 2.475 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $1.01025 a pound on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, after earlier climbing the exchange limit to $1.0155 a pound, the highest ever for the most-active contract.

The CME limits gains or losses on cattle trading to 3 cents in a single day.

"Anything that spurs demand is going to" drive up prices, said Dennis Delaughter, owner of Progressive Farm Marketing Inc. in Edna, Texas. "There was some pressure to get this done" during negotiations aimed at reaching a free trade accord with South Korea, he said. "It was a black eye to the administration."

Some analysts and traders said they were skeptical of South Korea's commitment to the agreement.

The South Korea announcement "may be adding to the bullishness in the cattle pit today, but the real issue is the timing and impact of beef flows to that country," said A.G. Edwards & Sons livestock analyst Dan Vaught. "We don't have a good handle on that issue."

Delaughter also said he isn't convinced that South Korea will begin to accept more imports of U.S. beef.

"I'll believe it when I see it," he said.

South Korea agreed to resume imports of U.S. beef last year following a three-year ban triggered by fears of mad cow disease. But American beef has not reached South Korean consumers because quarantine authorities have rejected all shipments for containing the tiny bone fragments that South Korea fears could harbor mad cow disease.

Under the lowered standards, bone fragments will still be unacceptable. But Seoul will return only individual boxes of meat that contain the bone fragments, instead of rejecting the entire shipment, the statement said.

The two sides have haggled over the issue for months. Washington has strongly defended the safety of U.S. beef, accusing Seoul of using the issue of bone fragments to impose an unofficial import ban.

The United States does not appear fully satisfied with the deal. The ministry statement said the United States, although it did not oppose the compromise, was skeptical about whether beef producers would attempt again to export to South Korea after experiencing the rejections.

The beef dispute has been a sore point between the two countries, which are seeking to forge a free trade agreement. Their eighth round of free trade negotiations opened in Seoul on Thursday.


Though the beef issue is not formally part of the free trade talks and is the responsibility of the two nations' agriculture officials, it is clearly casting a shadow over the negotiations.

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler, Washington's chief negotiator in the free trade talks, appeared cool to the new quarantine idea.

"The core of (South) Korea's proposal here is based on what we call a 'zero tolerance' for bone chips," she said at a press conference. "We just can't agree to that proposal given that it's not based on science and it's just commercially unfeasible."
 
Top