Meat + Poultry - March 2006 - 48

Photos courtesy of the U.S. Meat Export Federation

EXPORTING

PROGRESS
U.S.M.E.F's Philip Seng discusses
the roller coaster ride of getting
U.S. beef back in Japan

ometimes it seems as if exports
for the U.S. meat industry are a
case of two steps forward, one
step back, except when it's one step
forward and two steps back. For every
increase in exports there seems to be
a matching crisis or problem holding
back true progress. The recently reopening and subsequent reclosing of
the Japanese market to U.S. beef is a
case in point.
After months of delicate and often
frustrating negotiations to return U.S.
beef to what had been the industry's
most lucrative offshore market before
the Japanese government abruptly
closed ports to U.S. beef following
the discovery of a bovine spongiform
encephalopathy-infected cow in Washington state at the end of 2003, an accord was reached late last year. The
agreement was rescinded a mere six
weeks later when one U.S. shipper sent
disallowed product to Tokyo.
52

MEAT&POULTRY

March 2006

Philip Seng, president and C.E.O.
of the Denver-based U.S. Meat Export
Federation, has been around for the
victories as well as the defeats. His and
his staff 's tireless efforts to promote
product abroad have kept U.S. meat
exports in business in an extraordinarily competitive marketplace, where
economic, political and social issues
entangle with the issues of meat trade.
Indeed, when we spoke with Seng in
early February he was calling from
Japan, where he was negotiating once
more with officials to resolve the current crisis and bring back U.S. product
to the market.
M&P: What's the present situation
with regard to the Japanese market?
Are you optimist the market will reopen to U.S. beef any time soon?
Seng: I think there are two things
that really drive this issue. Number one
would be the results of the investiga-

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By Steve Bjerklie
meat&poultry@sosland.com

tive report. The Secretary of Agriculture (Mike Johanns) enunciated this
when he talked about his 12 points, that
U.S.D.A. would not sacrifice speed;
they were going to look thoroughly at
this issue. The Japanese want to have
full understanding of what occurred,
of where the breakdown occurred. The
second thing is what happens now. The
secretary apologized to the Japanese,
saying, "We acknowledge this is our
problem." He was very open. U.S.D.A.
agreed to a protocol late last year, and
we breached that protocol.
But the apology is empty unless there
really is corrective action. That's going
to be the second issue here: What we
are going to do to assure the Japanese
that this issue doesn't surface again.
Obviously this reassurance applies to
Japanese officials, but perhaps more
importantly, Japanese customers. A
recent poll taken in Japan found that
79 percent of consumers expressed at
least some concern about reopening
the market U.S. beef too quickly.
Again, I think there are two issues:
There is the trade, and there is the
consumer. The first thing we can do
with the trade is address the pipeline

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Meat + Poultry - March 2006

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