An extensive advertising campaign has been launched to assure Japanese beef customers that their meat is safe, despite a bovine spongiform encephalopathy scare in that country.
The campaign is led by the United States Meat Export Federation, which handles American international red meat sales. The ads are designed to save beef consumption and restore consumer confidence.
“It is working with beef groups from Australia, Canada and New Zealand to promote imported beef” said Larry Sears, chair of the Canada Beef Export Federation.
“All those countries are free of BSE.”
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Recently confirmed BSE cases in several Japanese dairy cows have sent the domestic industry into a tailspin. Retail beef sales have been cut in half as Japanese consumers reject beef for fear of BSE, which has been linked to a similar brain wasting condition in humans.
The U.S., New Zealand and Australia have already run full-page newspaper ads to reassure consumers. Canada planned to follow suit the weekend of Oct. 20 with ads and flyers providing evidence that BSE does not exist in this country.
It was hoped the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would participate in the campaign to lend credence to Canadian cattle’s health status. However, the beef export federation fears the CFIA has been slow to respond because it wants legal clearance for the use of its logo and the text of the print material. The federation needs quick action because the ads must run in the Japanese media immediately.
The Canadian federation has already distributed 30,000 information flyers to be displayed in Japanese retail stores to explain Canada’s BSE status and safeguards, said Ted Haney of the export federation.
A newsletter sent to meat buying contacts explains Canada’s status in greater detail. An ad has also been placed in a Saturday issue of a Japanese consumer newspaper and should reach 30 million readers.
Japan has introduced extensive post-mortem brain tests on all animals destined for human consumption.
There are concerns that the test gives a false positive reading in one out of every 1,000 carcasses, which Canadian processors consider too high.
Besides food safety concerns, the BSE scare could turn into an international trade issue.
“Japan may decide to use their new high bar of BSE testing as an effective trade barrier for all other importers,” Haney said.
Canada regularly tests brain tissue and has laws in place to prohibit feeding of rumen-based protein to ruminants like cattle and sheep.
