The beef’s back–sort of
At this very moment, Japanese health inspectors may be poring over the first shipment of U.S. beef to Japan in seven months. The Japanese cracked down on U.S. meat shipments after the first U.S. case of BSE in December 2003, but after months of wrangling the governments recently helped broker a deal to end the ban. Whether ...
At this very moment, Japanese health inspectors may be poring over the first shipment of U.S. beef to Japan in seven months. The Japanese cracked down on U.S. meat shipments after the first U.S. case of BSE in December 2003, but after months of wrangling the governments recently helped broker a deal to end the ban. Whether Japanese consumers will bite is another matter:
We don’t know when we get the next shipment,” the official said, adding that they would like to see reaction from Japanese consumers before making additional buy orders. Japanese retailers are generally cautious about restarting sales of U.S. beef, as media polls have shown that many Japanese consumers remain concerned about its safety.
In fact, one poll reports that more than 70 percent of Japanese won’t be sampling the new shipments. Australian and South American exporters have benefited from these doubts, but some Japanese appear to have soured on beef altogether—it’s declining as a source of protein in the country.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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