A government official in charge of consumer protection affairs (front) checks US beef products sold at a supermarket in Taichung city yesterday. CNA

TAIPEI: The first batch of US bone-in beef is likely to arrive in Taiwan within one week now that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued Quality System Assessment (QSA) certifications to qualified suppliers, an official said yesterday.

The new QSA regulations stipulate that both boneless and bone-in beef from cattle less than 30 months of age slaughtered after November 2 can be exported to Taiwan, while only boneless beef from cattle slaughtered before that date can be sold to Taiwan.

With QSA certifications, US bone-in beef will be subjected to the same inspection and quarantine procedures as those applied to boneless beef once arriving in Taiwan, the economic affairs official said.

"As ocean shipments from the United States to Taiwan take seven to 10 days, the first batch of US bone-in beef will be able to enter Taiwan's market after November 17 at the earliest," the official added.

The guidelines for the regulations were established in a protocol on US beef imports signed by Taipei and Washington on October 23, but the QSA stipulations and the age of the cattle from which exported beef can be obtained were more clearly addressed in the USDA's detailed document issued November 9.

While the protocol did not specify that beef and beef products must be from cattle of any particular age, the new regulations state that only deboned and bone-in beef products from cattle "less than 30 months of age" will be shipped "as a temporary market transition measure."

The protocol also gives market access to US ground beef and beef offal, but the economic affairs official said the possibility of the USDA issuing QSA certifications for these products is remote.

Moreover, he added, the bureaucratic procedures known as "three controls, five certifications" are also expected to help bar those products from entering Taiwan amid public fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

Meanwhile, Lin Hsueh-jung, director of the Bureau of Food Safety under the Department of Health, said US beef exporters should submit three certificates - QSA certificates, beef safety certificates and quarantine certificates - when shipping their beef to Taiwan.

Once the products arrive at Taiwan's ports of entry, the economic affairs authorities' Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection and the Council of Agriculture's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine will respectively conduct random checks on the shipments, with 5 percent of the products expected to be inspected before entering Taiwan, Lin said.

Regarding imports of US beef offal and ground beef, which are considered to be potentially hazardous to human health, Lin said the economic affairs authorities have separated them from bone-in beef and given each of them a separate CCC Code classification number to facilitate import controls.

Prospective importers of US beef offal and ground beef should file applications with the economic authorities' external trade department, Lin said, but he did not anticipate many would because of the inspection procedures established.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 11/11/2009 page2)