SEOUL: South Korea has resumed quarantine inspections of Canadian beef after no mad cow cases have been reported in the North American country in over 10 months, the agriculture ministry said.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said it has again started inspecting beef from cattle under 30 months old after halting all imports on Feb. 13. The ban went into effect after Canada confirmed a cow in Alberta was infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.
The ministry said that Canadian and South Korea inspectors carried out on-site checks and held consultative meetings twice this month. It added the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has categorized Canada as a “controlled BSE risk country” that can export meat.
Canada exports beef to roughly 60 countries including the United States and Japan, with South Korea, Taiwan and Belarus being the only three that halted imports from February onwards.
The ministry, meanwhile, said as an extra precaution, it will conduct random sample tests on 5 percent of all Canadian imports instead of the normal 3 percent, and will send inspectors every year to beef export facilities in the country to make certain they follow internationally set rules of safety. BSE can cause brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
The latest lifting of the ban comes after South Korea stopped Canadian beef imports once before following the outbreak of the mad cow disease in 2011. It had resumed imports in March 2012.
Canada is the country’s fourth-largest beef exporter, following Australia, the United States and New Zealand.
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