The Houston Chronicle reports that Mexico has agreed to lift its ban on US beef and cattle, possibly sometime in the next month, contingent on the implementation of a US program certifying that meat cannot be processed until it has been tested for mad cow disease.
Mexico banned American beef on Dec. 24 after the first US case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, was found in a cow in Washington State.
Mexico has been second only to Japan as an importer of US beef.
Mexico banned American beef on Dec. 24 after the first US case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, was found in a cow in Washington State.
Mexico has been second only to Japan as an importer of US beef.
- KC's View:
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Unless we're reading this wrong - and we don't think we are - it appears that the US is willing to test all the meat being sold to Mexico, but not all the meat being slaughtered for here in the US.
After all, the United States slaughters about 36 million cattle a
year, and tested only 20,000 of them for mad cow disease last year. This year, it plans a major increase in testing - to a whopping 40,000.
Compare that to France, where they test about half of the six million cattle that are slaughtered, or Japan, where they test every one of the 1.3 million cows eaten by the public.
