News Update

News Update
Nov. 16, 2007

Philippines Allows Full Market Access for U.S. Beef

Acting Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner today announced that the Philippines has fully complied with international trade standards regarding beef and beef products by allowing complete market access for U.S. beef and beef products of all ages.

“I applaud Philippine Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap for making a decision that is based on sound science and in line with international guidelines,” Conner said. “The Philippines has set the standard for other Asian nations, and we will continue to press for full market access throughout the Pacific Rim.”

In May 2007, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) formally classified the United States as a controlled risk country for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). This status confirms that U.S. BSE regulatory controls are effective and that U.S. beef and beef products of all ages can be safely traded.

Recent bilateral discussions between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture resulted in this market expansion and an agreement to allow for U.S. beef and beef products of all ages. Previously, imports of U.S. beef and beef products were restricted to boneless beef and offals from cattle less than 30 months of age.

The United States exported $4.9 million of beef and beef products to the Philippines in 2003. That market closed when BSE was detected in the U.S. in an imported cow from Canada in December 2003. U.S. beef exports to the Philippines reached $6.3 million in 2006 when partial market access was achieved. Under this new agreement, USDA estimates that U.S. beef exports to the Philippines could potentially double in 2008.

— From a USDA news release.

Canada, South Korea to Discuss Beef Imports

Yonhap News reported that Canada and South Korean officials are slated next week to hold working-level discussions on the possible elimination of Seoul’s ban on Canadian beef imports, according to MeatingPlace.com.

Scheduled for Nov. 22-23 in Seoul, the meeting will center on sanitary and phytosanitary conditions, as well as a ruling by the OIE in late May deeming Canada a controlled-risk country for BSE. Such a designation technically allows Canada to export beef from cattle of all ages.

Ministry members expect Canada to ask that Seoul lift all import restrictions based on OIE guidelines. While the officials say they respect OIE guidelines, they said they will likely push for maintaining import limits on specified risk materials while relenting on ribs and other bone parts, MeatingPlace reports.

Until Seoul banned Canadian beef in May 2003 following the discovery of a case of BSE in Canada, the North American country was the fourth-biggest exporter of beef to South Korea behind the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Cured Meats May Hold Key to Heart Attack Survival, Study Says

Nitrites and nitrates found in cured meats, vegetables and drinking water may help heart attack survival and speed recovery, according to a pre-clinical study led by a cardiovascular physiologist at the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center in Houston.

Nathan Bryan, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor at UT-Houston’s Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM), says it is a significant finding because simple components of our diet (nitrate and nitrite) that we have been taught to fear and avoid in food can actually protect the heart from injury.

Nitrite forms nitric oxide gas during a heart attack that reopens closed or clogged arteries, thereby reducing the amount of permanent injury to the heart muscle, according to the study. Although nitric oxide is metabolized to produce nitrite, which in turn produces nitrate, the process can be reversed in the body, allowing nitrite/nitrate-laden plasma and heart tissue to create vessel-widening, nitric oxide gas during oxygen deprivation, according to Bryan.

These benefits are not limited to heart disease, Bryan says. He suggests that dietary nitrite/nitrate can also help with other conditions characterized by a sudden disruption of blood or oxygen, including stroke or peripheral vascular disease. He says he is aware of seven clinical trials involving nitrite/nitrate therapy, but says that nitrite and nitrate should be investigated in terms of preventing disease as well as potential treatments.

Because of a report in the 1960s linking nitrite/nitrate to cancer, the nitrogen compounds were much maligned, but Bryan asserts that they are not carcinogens. “Many studies implicating nitrite and nitrate in cancer are based on very weak epidemiological data,” Bryan said. “If nitrite and nitrate were harmful to us, then we would not be advised to eat green leafy vegetables or swallow our own saliva, which is enriched in nitrate.”

The findings of the study appeared in the Nov. 12 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

— Adapted from an article on medicalnewstoday.com.

— compiled by Linda Robbins, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc. (API)