» Banners hang from the windows of a town house in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, on May 15. The banners say, “My family opposes the resumption of imports of beef infected with mad cow disease.” Many of the buildings residents say that, in addition to the banners, they will hold a series of one-person demonstrations in front of the Government Complex in the city of Gwcheon to protest U.S. beef.

The South Korean government, in its agreement to resume imports of U.S. beef, appears to have agreed to import bovine parts classified and banned from trade by the World Organization for Animal Health as “specified risk materials thought to cause mad cow disease.”

The new information about the agreement, which has been plagued by public opposition and government mistakes, was uncovered in a Hankyoreh report published on May 15. According to the report, South Korea agreed to import certain bovine parts but not classify them as SRM, even though the U.S. Department of Agriculture classifies the same parts as SRM and bans them from human consumption. Specified risk materials are most likely to be contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

This appears to conflict with the government’s previous arguments about the beef deal with the United States. Agriculture Minister Chung Woon-chun has argued in the past that the government’s beef negotiations with the United States were based on the scientific standards set by the OIE.

On May 15, the government verified the truth of the Hankyoreh report. This, in combination to widespread public opposition to the U.S. beef deal, is likely to put the government under greater pressure to renegotiate the deal and reprimand related officials.

An official at the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said, “Under the new sanitary conditions for beef imports, the list of special risk materials has been narrowed down from the OIE’s list. It is also a fact that the government removed some bovine parts, which are unfit for human consumption in the U.S. because they are classified as specified risk materials, from the list of parts classified as special risk materials in the beef deal.”

According to OIE standards for cows older than 30 months, seven bovine parts, including the brain, spinal column, spinal cord and some kinds of intestinal material, are banned because they could contain SRM. This means the entire spinal column, including the backbone and other vertebral bones, is classified as SRM.

Other bovine parts, like the third sacral nerve, are classified as SRMs and cannot be used for food. The new sanitary conditions for beef imports signed by Korea and the United States made some of these materials exempt from the import ban, including: the transverse and spinous processes of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar vertebrae; the coccygeal vertebrae; the medial sacral crest; and the wings of the sacrum.

Of these, the USDA has banned from human consumption the transverse and spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae, the spinous processes of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae and the medial sacral crest.

Park Sang-pyo, who is a member of a group of veterinarians, warned that such parts could be imported and used in beef tail soup and cooked beef, which are favorite foods in Korea.

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