Agence France Presse | January 30, 2002
Australian agriculture minister Warren Truss urged Japanese consumers to "eat Australian, eat safely" Wednesday as the mad cow crisis here continued to dampen beef sales.
"I offered to cooperate with any program the Japanese government has in mind... to help restore Japanese confidence in beef," Truss said after a meeting with his counterpart Tsutomu Takebe.
"In the interim, eat Australian, eat safely," Truss said. Australian beef sales in Japan have declined about 25 percent from October to December from a year earlier, said Samantha Jamieson, chief executive of Meat and Livestock Australia in Japan.
However, its market share slightly surpassed that of the United States for the first time in 2001, she said, with Australian beef accounting for about 48 percent of all imports, with US beef taking up about 46 percent.
Australian, US and Japanese beef each account for about a third of the Japanese market.
Since September, three cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease have been confirmed in Japan, sending beef sales plummeting.
Truss also criticized meat packing firm Snow Brand Foods Co. for deliberately mislabelling Australian beef as domestic to benefit from a government subsidy program to buy up old stocks that had not been tested for BSE.
"Consumers everywhere have got a right to expect honesty in labelling," he said. "I know that the Japanese market is particularly sensitive to those kinds of issues and we are sympathetic with that view."
Truss was to travel to Japan originally for the Quint Agriculture Ministerial Meeting of ministers from Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan and the United States last weekend, but it was postponed after EU farm commissioner Franz Fischler fell ill.
The Australian farm minister decided to make the trip anyway as it would be his first visit to Japan, which relies on Australia for five percent of its food intake, since taking office in July 1999.
"We believe there is enormous potential for a supplier of green and clean farm produce such as Australia to occupy a larger share of your market," he said.
Truss also outlined the stance Australia would take on the upcoming World Trade Organization round of talks, saying "it's agriculture's turn" to benefit from the WTO's ability to break down trade barriers.
The minister said Australia does not object to subsidizing farmers as custodians of the environment, the economic base of rural communities, and protectors of national culture.
"Our objection is when that support is provided by way of a production subsidy, based on the amount of food that a particular farmer produces, not directed in any precise way with the environmental outcome that's being offered," he said.
"Because subsidies are provided in this way, overproduction occurs, food mountains develop and there are serious distortions in the free and fair trade of food products around the world," Truss said.Agence France Presse:
