Japan says banned spinal column found in US beef shipment

Japanese officials said Wednesday that a spinal column was found in a U.S. beef shipment in violation of a trade accord that prohibits parts believed to pose a risk of mad cow disease.

A statement from two government ministries said that Japan has informed the U.S. Embassy of the findings and that shipments have been temporarily halted from the California plant involved.

David Marks, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, confirmed that U.S. officials were aware of the incident and will conduct a "full investigation to find out how it happened."

He added, however, that there was nothing inherently wrong with the product in question.

"While we recognize that this is a product that doesn't meet Japanese standards, the product is perfectly safe, and the international animal health organization has determined that all meat, all cuts, all ages of American beef are safe," Marks said.

The spinal column was discovered Monday at a Japanese meat-processing factory during an inspection, said the statement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

It was found in one of 700 boxes shipped from a plant in California owned by Kansas City-based National Beef, the statement said.

Calls to the company seeking comment were not immediately returned.

The meat was in storage since August and was intended for fast-food chain Yoshinoya D&C, which uses U.S. beef for its popular beef bowl dish, said a Ministry of Health spokesman who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media.

The box containing the spinal column was a mislabeled cut of beef, which the company had not ordered, the spokesman said. The other 699 boxes remain in the warehouse while Japanese officials await a U.S. response.

Japan imposed a ban on U.S. beef imports in December 2003 after the first case of mad cow disease was found in the United States.

The ban was lifted in late 2005, only to be imposed again in January 2006 after inspectors found prohibited animal parts in a veal shipment from New York.

The agreement between the two countries states that meat shipped to Japan comes only from cattle age 20 months and younger, which are thought to pose less of a risk of the disease. U.S. exporters must also remove spinal columns, brain tissue and other materials from shipments bound for Japan.

U.S. beef imports resumed in July 2006, but sales are a fraction of what they used to be.

Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle. In humans, eating meat products contaminated with the illness is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal malady.