South Korea beef deal must prove out

The news today that South Korea has fully opened its borders to U.S. beef imports is badly needed. It is the prelude to the summit this weekend at Camp David between President Bush and the South Korean chief.

There is no sense being naive--South Korea capitulated because they want a broader trade agreement with the U.S., and President Bush, a rancher himself, made a beef accord the lynchpin for the rest of the agreement. We in the beef industry can be grateful for that.

However, we also do not want to break an arm patting ourselves on the back. Twice since the BSE outbreak four years ago shut down the beef trade with Asia, South Korea has signed an agreement to let U.S. beef in, only to sabotage it and hand the U.S. a pyrrhic victory. We must be on guard for that again, and South Korea needs to prove its good intentions by actually accepting and promoting shipments of U.S. beef.

The reality is, that virtually no U.S. beef has made its way into South Korea, despite two previous, alleged, border openings. South Korea has been excruciatingly correct in interpreting international trade rules, and managed to turn down every U.S. beef shipment on the most narrow of technical grounds. The most popular excuse has been minute bone fragments, when the shipments are all supposed to be boneless, followed closely by beef that is older than 20 months of age.

The science of determining a carcass' age is very inexact, and subject to all manner of subjectivity, at best. Cattle, like human beings, are skeletal animals and quite naturally have bones. My understanding is that the bone fragments South Korea has been turning down U.S. beef shipments for, are not visible to the human eye.

Rather than lip service and good intentions, South Korea needs to demonstrate good faith and let in the most wholesome, most heavily inspected, best quality beef it can get anywhere--that from the United States. The time for hyprocrisy is over: the facts are that South Korea has had a virtual explosion of Mad Cow disease in it's own domentic cattle, and it has no grounds for rejecting U.S. beef, which has had no cases in its beef herd.

Like the old American saying goes, South Korea--Actions speak louder than words.