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U.S. beef will hit the Korean market next week since no bone chips were found in a 6.4-ton U.S. meat shipment that arrived here on Monday. Importer Nerp said an X-ray by the National Veterinary Research & Quarantine Service showed no bone fragments in the 449 meat packages.
The company plans to provide the beef to wholesalers as soon as the final quarantine results come out Friday morning and it is cleared by Customs. However, consumers will still have to wait before they can buy American steaks because the first shipment will be provided only to dealers and wholesalers as samples. A second batch of 2.4 tons of U.S. beef arrived in Incheon Airport on Thursday and is being inspected now.
Meanwhile Canada asked Korea to fully resume imports of its beef at the 10th round of bilateral free trade talks that opened at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul on Monday, a Korean Foreign Ministry official said. Korea rejected the proposal, saying the quarantine is not on the agenda for the trade talks. Canadian beef imports were halted in May 2003 after mad cow disease was discovered in that country.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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