Exports boom, trouble at home

The news comes at a time of booming beef exports, with total shipments reaching a record last year, thanks to expanding markets in countries including Russia and Canada, according to Commerce Department data.

But exports to Japan, Mexico and South Korea, which bought more than 80 percent of US beef and veal exports in 2003, have yet to match their earlier peaks, with many of them maintaining certain restrictions that may help temper any fallout.

A woman picks up local beef at Lotte Mart in Seoul April 25, 2012. Two major South Korean retailers halted sales of US beef after an outbreak of mad cow disease as the country's agriculture ministry looked set to move towards banning quarantine inspections, a move that would effectively end imports. Lotte Mart, a unit of Lotte Shopping Co, said it had suspended sales due to what it said was "customer concerns", as did Home Plus, a unit of Britain's Tesco PLC. [Photo/Agencies]

Mexico, which buys more US beef than any other country, said it has no plans to halt imports and that it would maintain the same regimen of inspections for trade across the border.

Vietnam, which suspended US beef imports between December 2003 and September 2011, also said it had not changed its policy on US beef in response to the latest news.

In the US domestic market, companies are still smarting from the fallout over a ground beef filler that critics called "pink slime", made from scraps of beef sprayed with ammonia gas to kill bacteria. The product was pulled from grocery store shelves and forced one producer to idle several factories and another to file for bankruptcy.

Beef exports plunged nearly 75 percent in 2004 in the wake of the first US mad cow incident in late 2003, with USDA reporting net cancellations of beef sales in five out of the first six weeks following the news.

Overall beef exports were 321,967 tonnes in 2004, down from 1.27 million tonnes in the previous year. Sales did not rebound to more than 1 million tonnes until 2010.

Mad cow

BSE, or mad cow, is a neurological disease caused by an abnormal form of a protein called a prion and can damage the central nervous system of cattle.

Greater awareness, surveillance and control over animal feed has helped contain the disease. Last year 29 cases were diagnosed worldwide, down from under 200 in 2007, the American Meat Institute says.

Reported cases peaked in peaked at 37,316 in 1992, 99.9 percent of which were in Britain, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.  

Experts insisted that as the dairy cow had not been eaten by other animals and there was no risk of the disease being spread, estimating the chance of an animal spontaneously contracting the disease at about one in a million.

"There's always been concern that there could potentially be a spontaneous form of mad cow disease that just arrives and doesn't get transmitted through feed," George Gray, director of George Washington University's Center for Risk Science and Public Health.