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Ranchers.net

South Korean official: don't let beef get in way of FTA
Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 4:17 PM

by Peter Shinn

The chief Korean negotiator of the U.S.-South Korean Free Trade Agreement (FTA) told a gathering of the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul Tuesday that U.S. lawmakers would be throwing away a "golden opportunity" if they let trade irritants like the ongoing dispute over beef derail the trade deal. That news comes after South Korean officials said last week U.S. beef would eventually be treated identically to Canadian product, which is currently banned.

According to the Yonhap News Agency, South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon said ratification of the FTA would help the U.S. establish an important trade bridgehead with South Korea ahead of Europe, Canada and China. Moreover, Minister Kim added that the failure of Congress to approve the FTA would "undermine U.S. leadership and credibility in promoting open markets and fair competition across the globe."

Regaining access to South Korea for U.S. beef wasn't part of the FTA negotiations. Nevertheless, several U.S. senators have linked support for the free trade pact with a normalization of the beef trading relationship between the U.S. and South Korea, which was initially disrupted when the U.S. found its first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) back in December of 2003. And though South Korea nominally re-opened its market to U.S. beef in April, the relationship has been fraught with setbacks. Currently, South Korea isn't conducting quarantine inspections of U.S. beef, essentially preventing U.S. product from coming to market there.

While technical negotiations between the U.S. and South Korean officials have been ongoing, they've borne little fruit to this point. Similar discussions between Canadian and Korean officials last week, according to Yonhap, yielded only an agreement to keep talking. Both U.S. and Canadian officials had hoped a designation by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) back in May that both countries were at "minimal risk" of BSE would help reopen South Korea's market. So far, the OIE designation appears only to have garnered a promise that U.S. and Canadian beef will get the same treatment from South Korean officials.

And Minister Kim on Tuesday argued that the beef trade issue wasn't a trade issue at all. At the same time, he also vowed his government was working as hard as it could to resolve the beef trade dispute.

"However, given that this is more of a public health issue than a mere trade issue, we really have no choice but to err on the side of caution in approaching the problem," said Kim.

That's an approach that's not likely to pacify U.S. lawmakers who want a quick resolution to the beef issue. The U.S. argues its wide range of responses to BSE, as evidenced by the OIE minimal risk designation, proves the beef dispute is, indeed a trade matter, and not a public health issue at all.
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