Japanese eye more NZ beef after US meat banned

A delegation of Japanese officials will arrive on Monday to discuss increasing New Zealand beef exports to Japan after the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States.

A single case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was found in Washington state last month. It followed a case of the disease in Alberta, Canada, in May.

Japan and Korea have now banned US beef, as have more than 20 other countries.

A Meat New Zealand spokeswoman said the delegation included three Japanese officials from the equivalent of New Zealand's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

The group would also speak to Australian officials about its beef trade with Japan.

"What they are going to do is talk about supply, because Japan has said it won't take beef from the US now," she said.

"The problem is that we have grass-fed beef and the Japanese like grain-fed beef. The difference is mostly taste.

"The grain-fed beef has a milder flavour.

"At the moment Japan has a [special] tariff on, which means that if volumes get above a certain level in any particular quarter, then the tariff increases quite a lot. So I guess they will be looking to discuss that as well."

Japan is one of the top importers of US beef, taking 31 per cent of exports last year.

About two-thirds of New Zealand's beef and beef offal goes to the US. New Zealand earned $868 million in the year ending last September, from just over 220,000 tonnes.

Japan took 11,000 tonnes of beef and veal from New Zealand last year. We are its fourth-largest supplier, well behind Australia and the US. Canada was beating New Zealand as a supplier to Japan until its BSE case.

Meat New Zealand chief executive Mark Jeffries said the Japanese group were essentially on a fact-finding mission.

"What this BSE incident has done is perhaps encourage the Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese, and others, to be looking at the New Zealand manufacturing beef product in a way they haven't before."

- NZPA