UNDER SECRETARY J. B. PENN: "Let
me say that I think all of you know that we have had discussions with
the Japanese concerning their closing their market to our beef since December
23 or soon thereafter. And we've gone back and forth in those discussions.
And so we got to the point where we thought we could fruitfully have another
set of discussions last weekend, and we did. We took a delegation there,
and I think you've seen on the website the members that went, so I won't
repeat that.
"And the Japanese government had a similar delegation, and I
think it made the point that this issue has become of interest to not
only agriculture and not only trade, but other parts of the government
as well. So we wanted to recognize that.
"We went into the discussions over the weekend without any preconditions,
and we did discuss all of the issues that we have. As you know and as
you've widely reported, they have certain views on what constitutes scientific
amelioration measures and what needs to be done to maintain food safety.
"And we have certain views on those same sorts of things. So
we discussed those issues.
"And we also, once again, explained all of the things that we
have done since December 23. And we talked about the epidemiological investigation
again and fully explained that. We talked about the actions that we have
taken in two main regards -- that we have greatly strengthened the barrier
protecting human health--that is, to make sure that none of the infected
tissue can get into the food supply.
"And that focuses on SRMs and animals over 30 months of age.
"And we talked about the barrier that we've got to make sure
that there's no spread of this disease in the animal herd. And that's
the strengthening of the feed ban and the other things that we have done
that FDA has announced.
"And then we talked about our enhanced surveillance system and
how we have identified the high-risk population and how we're going to
be sampling a high proportion of the high risk population and how we think
that that's more than sufficient to detect the extent and prevalence of
the disease in the livestock herd if we have it.
"So after having aired our issues on both sides, we did come
to an agreement on a process on steps by which we believe we can get trade
resumed. And rather than this being an endless process, we decided on
a time frame that we felt was appropriate. So we are going to start the
process almost immediately, and we're going to try to end it then in the
summer.
"And during that period of time we're going to establish a technical
working group, and we're going to each side nominate to the other side
a certain number of technical experts. But we're going to try to have
the first meeting in May and then another meeting in June and then to
try to have a final meeting in July.
"Now Kenijiro Sausae from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
Director General there, is going to look over the process from the Japanese
side, and I'm going to look over it from our side. And so at the end of
July we'll take the work of the working group, and then we'll review it,
and the Japanese side will review it.
"And ultimately this work goes to the Japanese Food Safety Commission
which is their independent third party group charged with food safety.
And so they will review and determine what, if any, changes need to be
made in the Japanese regulations.
"And that would involve testing and SRM removals and those sorts
of things. And then they are the ones who say to the other agencies in
the Japanese government, here are the regulations that need to be changed.
"So that's sort of the process that we've got worked out.
"Now another thing that's very, very important is that we want
this to be an open and transparent process. We want to communicate the
technical discussions to consumers in Japan and to consumers here as well.
But it's very important that we establish a scientific basis for however
we go forward, and we want the Japanese consumers certainly to understand
that.
"We are going to be talking about with this technical group,
the list of topics that's in the little joint press statement in the website.
But it is, the definition of BSE and the various testing procedure, the
definition of SRMs, appropriate surveillance, feed regulations, risk categorization,
status of countries, and other issues including products that can be safely
traded-- the risk categories for products and that sort of thing.
"And I think that's it. I think that we've got the process established,
and we're going to focus on the science and try to work our way through
this. And at the end of this process we would hope that most of the beef
trade resumes under conditions that the Japanese consumers can certainly
be assured of its safety just as our consumers are assured of the safety
of U.S. beef.
"So that's it."
QUESTION: "This is an obvious question, I guess.
If I didn't ask it, everybody else would. August?"
PENN: "In the press release, we used ‘summer’
because we don't want to say it's got to be done by a certain date and
then you miss by two days and then you guys would come back and say ‘you
missed your deadline’, you know. But, you know, when summer ends
and -- and so we're shooting to use May, June, July, August to wrap this
up."
QUESTION: "Wrap it up by the end of August?"
PENN: "Again, end of summer."
QUESTION: "When you say "wrap it up,"
meaning the consultations or decision by the Japanese government on taking
the first step to our trade?"
PENN: "Well, I think we want to try to get
all of the working group activities done by July, and then we want to
make that information available to the Japanese authorities just as quickly
as we can thereafter. And it will take them some time to of course review
and evaluate the information."
QUESTION: "So then it could be far beyond summer
before trade potentially resumes."
PENN: "My anticipation is that we're talking
about summer."
QUESTION: "You're talking about resuming trade
before fall-- in other words, before September?"
PENN: "Now, guys, just look at the press release,
if you will. I don't have it in front of me, but it says "resumption
of the importation of both American and Japanese beef by some time around
summer." And that ambiguity is on purpose."
QUESTION: "There's a key thing in there --
Japanese beef."
PENN: "Um-hum."
QUESTION: "Well, they've had a lot of cases
of mad cow disease. So is our approval or our lifting our, U.S. lifting
the ban on Japanese beef intrinsic to this deal?"
PENN: "No. Now these are not linked because
as you said they've had 10 or 11 or 12 cases. We've had one case. They've
taken certain amelioration measures; we've taken certain amelioration
measures. And then out of all of that, you get a risk category for our
country. And then you resume trade based on the classification of the
country as to the risk."
"And so these are not linked. But we do have a process by which
the Japanese will make application to resume exports to the U.S. market,
and we'll go through the scientific regulatory process that we have. We'll
use sound science, and we'll come to a conclusion just as we're asking
them to do for resuming importation of our product."
QUESTION: "And had they raised that before,
or was that a new request?"
PENN: "They have raised it before."
QUESTION: "And last, well a week or two ago
you said you were hoping there'd be some --"
PENN: "Well, we are having these discussions,
and I think the fact that we're having scientific discussions, and the
discussions are among technical experts, exhibits considerable flexibility.
I think they want to learn as much as they can about this disease and
all of the new things that have developed over the past few years and
about our regulatory process and our measures, and we certainly want to
learn all we can on our side.
"So I think it's very beneficial to have the experts talking
to each other."
QUESTION: "There should be two questions here.
Did they discuss removal of SRMs from livestock feed? Let me just leave
it and I'll ask the next one."
PENN: "Well, there are no conditions for anything.
I mean, we have agreed to have discussions, and we're going to talk about
SRMs and what constitutes definitions of SRMs and what amelioration measures
you take and what kind of removal procedures you have for SRMs. We're
going to have our experts and their experts talk about all of those things."
QUESTION: "Then secondly, two of the three
things, actions they have taken to enhance there have got a [inaudible]
problem to them?"
PENN: "No. But those are topics that we're
going to discuss, and we're going to explain more fully I'm sure in the
discussions what we have done and then what the effectiveness of those
measures are when they're implemented."
QUESTION: "Okay."
QUESTION: "Minister Kamai today --
PENN: "As I said, we have agreed to have these
discussions and to work through to the end of this process without any
preconditions."
QUESTION: "So what did he say?"
PENN: "I haven't seen his statement, but I
saw a recent statement in which he said, 100 percent testing or something
equivalent. And I think part of what we'll be discussing in these technical
talks is, are there different ways to get to the same level of consumer
safety, to the same assurance of a level of some consumer safety of beef?"
QUESTION: “Is there something equivalent?
PENN: “We didn’t get into equivalent
measures in our discussions over the weekend. We just set up the framework
whereby the experts will sit and discuss these things."
QUESTION: "The 30-month age limit is key in
North America, Canada, U.S., here. I'm going to assume when Japan agrees
we want them to accept beef from cattle under 30 months of age. But there's
been all this controversy about them finding --
"Is that a key issue? Are they going to --"
PENN: "No. But it's a very good question because
you're getting to the very kinds of issues and how they are interlinked
that the experts are going to be discussing. When I'm talking about us
discussing the definition of BSE and the kind of screening measures and
confirmatory tests you use, that's getting exactly to this question.
"The Japanese talk about 30 months because they claim to have
found two animals that had BSE under 30 months of age.
"Now, the main BSE testing laboratory in Weybridge, England,
won't confirm that those two animals had BSE because the Japanese used
one kind of test, and other people use another kind of test as the gold
standard. So we want to talk about which test should you use to absolutely,
positively say that you have a case of BSE.
"And we want to be able to agree on that rather than one country
using one kind of test and another country using another kind of test.
Let's agree on what we're going to say constitutes a case of BSE."
QUESTION: "Is that in other words, harmonizing?
PENN: "Well, in that sense --"
QUESTION: "I mean in general."
PENN: "No, no, in that sense we are moving
to harmonize, and we do that anyway. We have the guidelines from these
international standard-setting bodies which are the reference points.
I mean, they're the points of harmonization if you will.
"And under trade you've got to have standards, especially for
sanitary and phytosanitary issues. And we're looking to, in animal trade,
the OIE; and in the plant trade we look to the International Plant Protection
Convention; and then processed food products we look to the Codex. So
those are the three standard-setting bodies that we hope will provide
standards that everybody will follow."
QUESTION: "Did they give you any indication
at all that they were willing to back away from their current stands?
Outside of the fact that they agreed to talk about definitions. Did they
give you any indication that they would move away from their hard-line
stance, for instance, on testing all U.S. animals?"
PENN: "Well, the implication is that we discuss
all of these technical matters and we see where the received science is,
and then we think that their independent food safety commission will evaluate
that information and will render some opinion there."
QUESTION: "What animal ID? Did they raise --"
PENN: "No. That was not raised in our discussions
on the weekend."
QUESTION: "And previously have they?"
PENN: "Not to my recollection."
QUESTION: "Just as a housekeeping thing, the
name of the --"
PENN: "The exact spelling, it's S-A-S-A-E.
But the first name and the title are on the website in that joint press
release. He's the first name listed, and he's the director general in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
QUESTION: "And the other guy is -- our guy
who will be --"
PENN: "Well, I'm going to be the counterpart
for our side, but that's for the overall talks. Now the working group
will be composed of experts from the U.S. and from Japan, and then they'll
have independent meetings, and then they'll report to the two of us their
results at the end."
QUESTION: "And how many will it be, and who
will they be?"
PENN: "We don't know that yet. I mean, obviously
I just got back at 10:00 last night and just got here. But we want to,
if this group is going to have its first meeting in May we've got to have
that worked out very quickly. So we're going to be talking about it, but
it will be people who have expertise of course in these issues. And we
think it will largely be made up of government experts. But we are not
excluding the possibility that we'll have somebody from outside government
on this."
QUESTION: "What role does Canada play in this?
Presumably if U.S. beef, they start buying U.S. beef, they'd be more open
to Canadian as well. Is it something, is it solely a U.S. effort, or do
you have Canadians working on this too?"
PENN: "Well, of course we have constant discussions
with our Canadian counterparts. And as you know and as we've said repeatedly,
we're trying to harmonize our regulations with Canadian regulations. So
if we are able to further reach clarification with the Japanese on matters,
then I would think that that would bode well for Canadian trade as well."
QUESTION: "Do you think there's -- would you
feel comfortable in telling livestock producers that there is a possibility
that they could sell beef to Japan by fall?"
PENN: "Well, I would certainly say that that
is our hope and that's our expectation. But I have to say that these highly
complex discussions, and things can go awry along the way."
"MS. HARRISON: "We need to wrap up so
he can get ready for his next meeting. Is there a last question?"
QUESTION: "Did Creekstone come up?"
PENN: "There was some discussion of having
companies do 100 percent testing for the Japanese market on a voluntary
basis under a BEV type program."
QUESTION: "And the outcome of that was?"
PENN: "It was just discussion. I mean, we didn't
-- we of course didn't go anywhere with that."
QUESTION: "Can I ask a real quick – Did
the Japanese express concern about live cattle coming into the U.S., and
does that vary with the Japanese? And have you heard the "
PENN: "Okay. That's a three-part question.
The answer to the first question is, no. That didn't come up. And these
matters are not linked at all. I mean, the live cattle case is a U.S.
regulatory process, and that's not linked to Japan. And we've not heard
anything about the cotton case. Not a word."
QUESTION: "Let me just clarify that. So they're
not worried, Japan is not worried about Canadian live cattle coming into
the U.S.?"
PENN: "I can't speak for the Japanese and what
they're worried about. "
QUESTION: "Well, but they didn't express any
great concern--"
PENN: "I answered his three-part question.
It was not raised with us. It wasn't a part of our discussion over the
weekend."
QUESTION: "Okay, good. Thanks."
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