U.S. beef products arrive in violation of import regulation

Friday 12th December, 06:33 AM JST

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13 Comments

some14some at 07:27 AM JST - 12th December

"Mis-labelling" food products is common practice in Japan, and now we have "no-labelling" food product from U.S.A., do we need to discuss which one is better?
Statistician at 10:32 AM JST - 12th December

You would think that they didn't want cheap American beef.
cleo at 10:35 AM JST - 12th December

11th violation. You'd think they wanted to be suspended.

It seems pretty obvious they just can't be bothered to make the effort to get it right.
Badsey at 11:06 AM JST - 12th December

two boxes were missing labels? How many Japanese cars/parts lose labels? Either way send the whole shipment back it seems.
cleo at 11:22 AM JST - 12th December

How many Japanese cars/parts lose labels?

If Japanese car parts (or anything else, from anywhere) doesn't have the necessary documentation specified by the US and the US customs let them in anyway, surely that's a reflection on the shipshod standards of the US Customs as much as the Japanese car makers?

At least Japanese Customs are dong their job. Though I wish they'd stop holding up shipments of organic vegetarian dog food because the label is in Dutch.
Suzu1 at 11:24 AM JST - 12th December

Smithfield Beef is owned by a Brazilian company, JBS S.A., which is a multinational company with operations in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and the U.S. Smithfield alone processed over 2 millions cattle last year.
unklesam at 01:51 PM JST - 12th December

More missing paperwork ??? I think it's been mentioned before, the Americans would be wise to have their own people on hand for "every" box that is opened in Japan ! Blind trust in the Japanese is a terrible idea.
timorborder at 10:46 PM JST - 12th December

What a joke. US Beef are their own worst enemy.
gonemad at 11:03 PM JST - 12th December

cleo, customs cannot check everything, they just do some sampling. So these two examples won't tell you whether US or Japanese customs is doing their job or not.

Certainly Japanese customs are checking US beef more often than other merchandise due to political reasons as well as bad experience in the past.
floyd_43 at 12:11 AM JST - 13th December

"Certainly Japanese customs are checking US beef more often than other merchandise due to political reasons".

Despite all this uproar on the part of the Japanese about the quality of US beef or Chinese vegetables, about a year ago, I read an article in Bloomberg (I think) about how lax Japan's food quality laws are by international standards and how food companies in the EU regularly ship fresh produce that fails EU QC standards to Japan for re-processing...
30061015 at 01:26 AM JST - 13th December

"two boxes of ox tongues..." Why does Japan import ox tongues anyway? Are these ground up and mixed with "100% ground beef" products?
Good_Jorb at 01:57 AM JST - 13th December

The ox tongues are thinly sliced and usely served at yakiniku type restaurants. They taste ok.
Good_Jorb at 01:58 AM JST - 13th December

*usually