Korea bans beef from Dodge City Cargill plant

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South Korea, Asia's second-biggest beef importer, said it blocked a U.S. meat delivery for the second time this week after a Cargill Inc. shipment contained bones that are banned because of concern for mad-cow disease.

The prohibited ribs were found in a shipment of 18.1 metric tons, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said today in an e-mailed statement. The entire shipment will be returned and the plant will be barred from shipping to South Korea, it said.

Cargill spokesman Mark Klein said there was one box of bone-in beef ribs in a 1,188-box shipment of otherwise boneless chuck produced at the company's plant in Dodge City. Cargill will investigate and prepare a report on the inadvertent shipment for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he said. Cargill is the second-largest U.S. beef packer.

Banned ribs were discovered earlier this week in a shipment of 15.5 tons of beef from the former Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island, Neb., which was also excluded from the market, the ministry said.

South Korea had resumed quarantine checks on imports of U.S. beef only last week after halting them for about a month when a section of backbone was found in a shipment. The country contends th at cattle bones can harbor the agent that causes mad-cow disease, a debilitating livestock illness that has a rare but fatal human form.

Swift & Co., formerly the third-largest U.S. beef packer, was purchased by Brazil's JBS SA in July. Vanessa Esteves, a spokeswoman for JBS in Sao Paulo, didn't return calls seeking comment.

South Korea was the third-biggest buyer of U.S. beef behind Japan and Mexico before it banned imports of the meat in December 2003 when an animal with mad-cow disease was found in Washington state. Its purchases that year totaled $814 million.

The country eased its ban in January 2006, limiting imports to boneless cuts from animals aged 30 months or younger.

Bloomberg News