U.S. to push for full market access for beef imports

Posted on : 2011-03-24 15:09 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Analysts say the U.S. goal is both opening the market and tying the issue to KORUS FTA ratification
” released Mar. 3.
” released Mar. 3.

By Jung Eun-joo 

 

It has been confirmed that the United States has established concrete plans for the full opening of the South Korean beef market to be submitted to the South Korean government ahead of ratification of the South Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).

A report released on Mar. 3 by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, titled “U.S.-South Korea Beef Dispute: Issues and Status,” states that “Administration officials have stated that their objective is ‘to eventually secure full market access for U.S. beef’. . ..[but] the Administration may not require achieving this objective before the KORUS FTA is sent to Congress, and instead may seek to secure commitments from South Korea to move in steps toward that goal.”

During President Lee Myung-bak’s first official visit to the United States in April 2008, Seoul agreed to grant full permission for the importation of U.S. beef and abandon sovereignty on quarantine measures, and U.S beef importation hygiene conditions reflecting this were adopted in a notification by the Minister for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Following popular resistance in the form of the candlelight vigil demonstrations, however, U.S. meat exporters and South Korean importers agreed on a “voluntary arrangement” restricting the importation of beef from cattle aged over 30 months “until such time as the confidence of South Korean consumers has been restored.”

Because of this, Washington has been persistently demanding full market access for U.S. beef in South Korea as provided for in the original agreement, linking the issue with Congressional ratification of the KORUS FTA. The Congressional Research Service said that the U.S. negotiation team may raise the beef issue with Seoul if South Korean consumers are purchasing more U.S. beef and show confidence that U.S. measures to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy are effective.

The U.S. is viewing the increase in U.S. beef market share in South Korea to 32 percent, with the imports of $18 million last year representing a full 140 percent increase from the year before, as a signal of improved confidence. In response, the report indicated that the U.S. Department of Agriculture may demand full market access for U.S. beef from the South Korean government under four conditions.

First, it said that increased access to the beef market may be requested from Seoul if no additional BSE cases are discovered in the U.S. over a certain length of time in the future, such as three, five, or ten years. Another possibility cited as a potential trigger was the lack of any reports of violations of the terms of the voluntary industry arrangement for quarantine measures for “some stated time period.” Also mentioned was the possibility that if U.S. beef exporters reach a specified share of South Korea’s beef import market, they would take this as a sign of recovered confidence among South Korean consumers and demand full market access. Additionally, the report suggests that further access may be demanded if the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) assessment of the U.S. as a “controlled risk” nation for BSE is upgraded to the level of “negligible risk.” If Seoul agrees to these conditions, the report added, U.S. and South Korean trade authorities may keep the April 2008 beef protocol in place and modify the content through the exchange of letters, as occurred at the time of the KORUS FTA renegotiations.

Analysts say this approach from the United States has the twofold goal of expanding South Korean market access for beef and achieving ratification of the KORUS FTA, according to a strategy of waiting until the South Korean National Assembly passes a motion to ratify the KORUS FTA without any sense of burden over the beef issue and then pressuring Seoul at a later date to extract a definite pledge toward full market access for U.S. beef imports.

Experts are saying that Seoul now needs to enter renegotiations with Washington to strengthen the conditions on beef imports, as the Lee administration pledged it would do in May 2008.

Park Sang-pyo, office director of the Veterinarian Association for Public Health Policy said, “For the KORUS FTA, rather than giving full market access to U.S. beef in response to the petty ploys of the United States, the administration should instead demand renegotiations so that our U.S. beef imports follow the same conditions as in Japan or Taiwan.”

Unlike South Korea, Japan has imported only beef from cattle aged under twenty months even after the U.S. was designated a “controlled risk” nation, while Taiwan continues to prohibit the importation of certain parts such as entrails and ground beef according to the country’s laws.

  

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