A halt of Korean quarantine inspections on U.S. beef, made after U.S. beef producers mistakenly sent South Korea beef not intended for overseas sale, was lifted on June 8. Such inspections are a main step before the meat can be sold to Korean consumers, so their suspension effectively meant a halt on U.S. beef imports to South Korea.

The National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service (NVRQS) halted imports of American beef on June 4, after two shipments totaling 66.4 tons were brought into South Korea and one shipment had two boxes packed with beef ribs, which cannot be imported into Korea under the agreement between the two countries reached January last year.

The discovery caused Seoul to hold in customs 20 shipments totaling 156 tons of beef, and halt imports of new shipments. Since mid-April, U.S. meat processing companies have sent 34 shipments containing 227 tons of beef to South Korea.

Per the January 2006 agreement, bone-in meat is banned due to a 2003 mad cow disease outbreak in the U.S., as bone matter is thought to be a vehicle for the transfer of a version of the disease to humans.

In a June 7 letter to the South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Richard Raymond, undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said the U.S. worked to find out whether previous beef shipments, including 15.2 tons from Cargill Inc. and 51.2 tons from Tyson Foods Inc., had also not been checked by the U.S.-run South Korea exports certification program, but all shipments, excluding the two in question, were proved as having been certified as ‘for export,’ the letter said.

The U.S. said that "human error" was the cause of the mishap. The U.S. agriculture department also asked South Korea to lift its shipment ban against Cargill and Tyson Foods, saying the two companies were not aware of the fact that their beef meant for domestic sale was mistakenly exported to South Korea. The U.S. placed the blame on Am-Mex Service Co., a California-based exporter, for sending the wrong meat shipments.

The South Korean government decided to accept the U.S. explanation over the incident, as the agriculture ministry and the NVRQS announced on June 8 it would again issue quarantine certification for U.S. beef. The quarantine service agency, however, said it will maintain the shipment ban against Cargill and Tyson Foods until they present sufficient measures aimed at not repeating the mistake.

However, some critics say the South Korean government’s decision to restore quarantine inspections of U.S. beef was too hasty, because the decision was made without, for example, on-site inspections of the U.S. plants in question. In addition, the U.S. government gave no specific explanation over the ‘human error,’ without saying who exactly issued incorrect export-quarantine certifications and why. In addition, along with the South Korean government thus far, some critics are not buying the U.S. explanation of ‘human error’ by one shipping firm, saying that Cargill and Tyson Foods also need to be further investigated due to the incident.

Park Sang-pyo, chief editor of the Alliance of Veterinarians for People’s Health, a civic group, said, "Given the fact that the four [Cargill and Tyson Foods] plants simultaneously violated quarantine conditions, it should be viewed as an overall problem in the U.S. quarantine system rather than ‘human error,’ " placing suspicion on the slaughterhouses as well as the U.S. government. "In addition, the [Korean] government gave up its quarantine sovereignty by restoring the U.S.’s certification amid insufficient explanations from their side," Park continued.

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