Japan Made Specific Request for Veal
New York veal company was inexperienced in exporting.
Compiled by staff
Published: Jan 25, 2006
Atlantic Veal & Lamb, the Brooklyn, N.Y., company that shipped veal to Japan with vertebrae included, is inexperienced in exporting and was the only approved veal exporting facility in the United States before being de-listed after the incident.
According to comments made Tuesday by Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, Japan made it clear it wanted the same requirements for veal as the rest of beef. "Veal in itself was very new to the export verification process," he explains.
Johanns believed the mistake was a "simple human error." He says it appears to him "that as this shipment was being readied for shipment into Japan that all of it was just new enough where it just didn't connect with people it needed to connect to."
He adds that the paperwork involved here clearly listed the product as a "hotel-rack, sevin-ribs" or something to the effect that the vertebral column was still intact.
"If somebody wanted to hide something you would think that they would have fixed the label, changed the label to hide what was in that box. But if you look at the box, anyone with experience would see that this is a beef product with a vertebral column attached," Johanns says.
USDA Undersecretary J.B. Penn is in Japan this week trying to mend the United States' tainted reputation. Johanns added in comments to industry officials Tuesday that the trust issue is enormously important because you must always consider consumer trust.
"I've read some of the articles and what tends to happen in situations like this is people get impressions about what the circumstances are. And sometimes the impressions just are not accurate," Johanns says.
And despite that including the vertebral column is not a violation of U.S. regulations, it did violate the agreement with Japan, he says. "It was not a situation, however, when there was a risk to human health."
Permalink: Click here
Tagged: usda
|