03/28/05 More markets opening to U.S. beef

American Rancher March 28, 2005 The National Cattlemen's Beef Association said late last week that Taiwan had confirmed its market is to reopen to U.S. boneless beef no later than April 16th from cattle under 30 months of age. Taiwan of course imposed its ban following the discovery in 2003 of BSE in a cow that had been imported to the U.S. Taiwan had been the sixth largest market for beef by value importing about 76.5 million dollars of U.S. beef in 2003. It was also recently announced that Egypt was reopening to U.S. beef. It imports about 30-million dollars worth. R-CALF USA has pointed out that Egypt is requiring the beef to be of U.S. origin or from countries free of BSE. In other words, not Canadian. Japan, formerly the number one U.S. beef export market still remains closed over the BSE issue. There have been increasing calls for the U.S. to take retaliatory action against Japan but Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns opposes such action. Johanns: "Because once that gets started there just seems to be no end to it. It is never a situation where we retaliate and nobody does anything. It's counter-retaliation and you are just off to the races." Johanns says all the steps Japan has taken have been in the right direction. Johanns: "The problem is the steps come too far between each other. They just seem to be very, very slow. That is the process we are engaged in." I'm Bob Hoff.