Big in Japan? Good news from Tokyo: they'd love more of our beef. Now, brace yourself for the bad news.

Standing in front of two stretched-out cowhides hanging from the walls of the Jumping Pound Community Hall, 30 miles west of Calgary, Tatsuo Iwama appeared severely out of place. With his pleated Dockers neatly complementing a pressed oxford shirt and mannerly Japanese demeanour, not to mention his slight 5-foot-4 frame, he looked every bit the city slicker in a roomful of dusty, grey-haired cowboys. But since the city that Iwama represented was Tokyo, capital of one of the world's most alluring beef markets, these cattlemen had plenty of time for this city boy.

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They'd invited Iwama, executive director of the Japan Meat Traders' Association, to the August meeting of the Western Stock Growers' Association to get a handle on his country's appetite for Canadian beef. Was there any way that Japan, once a ravenous consumer of North American beef, would reestablish trade with Canada after BSE discoveries here? Would it ever import beef from cattle older than 30 months--considered to be the highest risks for developing the brain-wasting illness? Currently blocked from export to the U.S., they've backed up, unwanted, on Canadian farms. To their relief and delight, the answer that Iwama gave was a highly convoluted yes.

Before Canada's first BSE discovery in 2003, Japan imported 20,000 tons of Canuck beef every year, worth $85 million. After the diagnosis, Tokyo, like most importers, stopped the shipments entirely. Early this year, the Japanese began buying beef from verifiably younger cattle (under 20 months), provided that the so-called risk material (brain, spinal cord, et cetera) was removed. Under those limitations, Canadian packers have delivered about 200 tons of beef to Japan in the past eight months--roughly what they used to ship in a few days.

The ranchers who make up the Calgary-based growers' association say the key to reopening the Japanese floodgates is BSE testing of all cattle exports, since Japan, which faced its own BSE scare in 2001, requires 100 per cent testing at its slaughterhouses (the Canadian Food Inspection Agency tests less than two per cent of all slaughtered cows). "It's about giving the customer what he wants," says WSGA director David Pope.

Iwama confirms the WSGA's suspicions. "It is my private opinion, but if the government of Canada will accept those requirements asked by the Japanese government, because the requirements are the same as what the Japanese government requires domestically, it is a possibility that the Japanese government will accept all Canadian beef," Iwama says, through a translator. He even considers older cows to be on the menu, provided the broader testing regime is implemented. That should be good news for farmers who, according to WSGA estimates, have lost roughly half-a-billion dollars in the past three years from the inability to market older cattle.

Less encouraging is the CFIA's lack of interest. The government agency has rebuffed calls for 100 per cent testing (something the EU also practises on older cows) because the $20-per-head tests would, it claims, cause problems in terms of costs and logistics. But skeptics accuse the CFIA of playing politics, noting that the U.S. is firmly opposed to the idea of a more rigorous Canadian testing program. "It could undermine the working relationship between Canada and the U.S.," says Ted Haney, president of the Canada Beef Export Federation. Washington isn't open to total testing; in fact, in July, the U.S. scaled back testing of American cows to just 40,000 head annually, from 200,000, in what many interpreted as a move to appease the slaughterhouse lobby. If Ottawa moved to complete testing, it could cause consumers to doubt the U.S.'s wisdom.

For all of Iwama's encouraging news, there remain serious obstacles to a revamped Canada/Japan beef trade. Consumption has dropped by 200 million tons a year in Japan since their BSE experience. Meanwhile, all the additional checks Japan has implemented for Canadian beef imports (such as examining each box for banned risk material) has made our meat a little too pricey for their consumers anyway, Iwama says. Increased testing could make matters worse. Unless attitudes in Ottawa and Tokyo change drastically, it doesn't look as though Canada's beef industry will be turning Japanese again very soon.