Japanese government accepts findings on U.S cattle: By Pete Hisey on 2/17/05 for Meatingplace: The Liberal Democratic Party, Japan's ruling party, has essentially endorsed a decision by the health and agriculture ministries' task force to accept U.S. methodology for determining the age of cattle meant for export to Japan.

An LDP subcommittee on bovine spongiform encephalopathy said on Wednesday that it would endorse that decision, provided the Food Safety Commission also approves the methodology, which uses a combination of standard USDA meat grading and study of dentition and bone structure to guarantee that slaughtered cattle are under 20 months old.

There are still several impediments to reopening the border, but Japan's deputy consul-general, Kenichi Kimiya, told the Casper Star-Tribune that he expects shipments of beef to resume this summer.

However, Philip Seng, president and chief executive of the U.S. Meat Export Federation told Meatingplace.com that while the LDP still wields significant power, the opposition is now far more powerful that in recent years. "I think there will be extreme scrutiny in the Diet (Japan's senate) by the opposition," he said. "They will look at every detail."

Seng said that the long-awaited report concerning elimination of Japan's order to test every slaughtered animal for BSE has taken far longer than expected, and even if the law is modified, it may still take considerable time to resolve almost certain objections in the Diet. "The Japanese most definitely want American beef," Seng said, but government officials are going to be meticulous about every technical detail.