Northey hopes Iowa can market more beef to Japan

DES MOINES – With the 2003 mad-cow disease scare fast becoming a fading memory, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey said there is a growing appetite for corn-fed Iowa beef in Japan.

Fresh from a trade mission to Japan and South Korea -- two of the largest export markets for Iowa agriculture products -- Northey said he repeatedly heard appeals for access by Japanese consumers to more of Iowa's high-quality beef. But industry leaders say there remains some nervousness among government leaders who do not want to become too dependent on outside sources of food.

“They are very interested in Iowa cattle,” Northey said in an interview. He noted that imports of beef from U.S. cattle nearly doubled last year even with the current restriction only allowing U.S. beef from animals less than 21 months of age.

In 2003, Japan was the top importer of U.S. beef, buying 240,000 tons valued at $1.4 billion, he noted. That number dropped to zero after the discovery of the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad-cow disease, in the United States on Dec. 23, 2003 – an event that Northey dubbed “the cow that stole Christmas.”

Bruce Berven, executive vice president of the Iowa Cattlemen's Association, estimated that American beef producers have recaptured between 30 percent and 40 percent of that market, but face political impediments in seeking a compromise to allow U.S. beef from animals less than 30 months of age to be imported by Japan – a standard common in Taiwan and South Korea that would make most U.S. cattle eligible in the Japanese market.

“If that happens, I think we'll see a significant bump in the amount of beef that can go into Japan. I think as time has gone on folks are getting more used to the fact that (BSE) is not a problem,” Northey said.

“We're not nearly back to that billion dollars yet, but certainly back on the way to increase it so we can start to see some real increases,” the Iowa ag secretary added.

Ironically, Berven said, there have been three identified cases of BSE among roughly 100 million U.S. cattle – none involving meat that entered the food supply – while Japan had about two dozen cases in a cattle herd one-tenth the size of this country.

“The consumers in the foreign countries are accepting (U.S. beef) more readily than their governments who are using it as an artificial trade barrier from time to time,” Berven said. He expected no decision on the beef import issue would be made until after Japan's elections in July.

Northey said Japan already is a major buyer of Iowa food stuffs. He noted the Pacific island nation is the biggest market for feed grains and the No. 1 buyer of U.S. pork, too. Japan imports $1.5 billion worth of pork annually with a sizable share coming from Iowa, Northey said.

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