Cattle groups concerned about promise to Brazil; Vilsack on Japan and beef
Washington Ag Today April 12, 2010 The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association says its industry is being compromised by a promise the U.S. made to Brazil in the agreement the two nations made to negotiate the end of a WTO dispute. By negotiating a settlement the U.S. can avoid Brazilian tariffs on several U.S. exports including agricultural products. The U.S.C.A says that the United States agreed to publish a proposed rule by April 16th recognizing the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina as free of foot and mouth disease and to complete a risk assessment underway to determine if fresh beef can be imported from Brazil. Both the United States Cattlemen’s Association and R-CALF USA are concerned foot and mouth disease could be brought to the U.S. So, what did U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack get from the Japanese regarding a full reopening of their market to U.S. beef during his just completed visit? The Secretary sums up what he and his Japanese counterpart agreed to. Vilsack: “ And that in order for us to work towards getting on the same path we needed to have work groups meet and go through some of the technical issues that have to be resolved in order to this market to be reopened. So we committed to sending a team to Japan some time in the near futures and we hope we can work through our differences and at some point in time, hopefully sooner than later, the market is reopened.” Besides beef, Vilsack said he talked to the Japanese about specialty crops with which the U.S. has some disagreements with Japan. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net. ?
