Meat Show and MAFF

This morning we took the monorail around Tokyo Bay to the Big Sight to attend the Meat Industry Show. It was a nice day and the scenery was beautiful along the way. The Big Sight is a huge exhibition building and there were several different big trade shows going on in different parts of the complex. The U.S. Meat Export Federation had given us tickets for the Meat Industry Show but it turned out that there were also shows involving other foods and drinks in the same exhibition space. We ate lunch using all of the samples that were available from the various vendors. I know I have said this before, but the variety of products available in this country amazes me. For example, we got free soft serve ice cream cones from a company that has at least 30 different flavors of soft serve. I have included a couple pictures below of some booths that I think you will recognize and the third picture is of some beef from the company that I will visit in Kobe on Monday, notice the approximately $210 price tag. When we were talking to a gentleman that works for USMEF a buyer for one of the Korean beef bowl restaurants came by to see him. They really want the age limit on U.S. beef raised to 30 months and I agree with them. Another interesting thing at the USMEF booth was a video of a beef slaughter plant in the U.S. I saw several people stopping to watch it.

Next we took the monorail back to where we started the day and caught a cab to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. I had a discussion with three gentlemen about Food Safety and Traceability and Trade Policy. The gentleman who discussed trade policy’s focus is dairy products, so I ended up wishing that I knew more about the dairy program in the U.S. When he asked me some questions I had to tell him that I didn’t know much about the specifics of the dairy program since I am not involved with it directly. On the food safety and traceability side, I didn’t hear anything new. The discussion on trade policy was surprisingly open. Basically, he told me that if there were no tariffs the small scale farmers in Japan could not exist. Specifically they feel that they must protect their rice and dairy farmers. There is so much price variation between domestic products and imported products that high quotas must make up the difference for Japanese farmers to stay in business. They are discussing reducing tariffs as part of the Doha round of WTO negotiations, but with really no agricultural items to export and everything to import negotiating Free Trade Agreements either bilaterally or multilaterally doesn’t make since for their agricultural industry. Exports are only 1/20 of their total agricultural trade. Other industries would gain from a FTA with the U.S. and because of this one may be negotiated in the next ten years. They realize that the U.S. government would not support a FTA that doesn’t include agriculture but they would want to carefully choose which commodities to include. They recognize that pork and beef are important commodities to the U.S. and it seems that they may be open to reducing tariffs on these items if a FTA were ever negotiated. I asked about the 39% self sufficiency rate that I have been hearing so much about and they said that figure may not be entirely correct because feed imports are also included in that calculation and there are several variables. They also think that it might be possible to improve that percentage to 50% in a few years. I asked if there was a possibility of accepting modern production technology like biotech and hormones as a means to become more self sufficient. They said that is a good question that they can’t answer right now. The media has a big impact on all food related issues and reports on food and agriculture every day.

Tonight we had dinner with Mr. Tomiji Akabayashi, an Eisenhower Fellowships Alum. We dined at a restaurant owned by the founder of Sony. It was a traditional Japanese meal with many courses and took a long time to finish. We had a good conversation during the meal and I really enjoyed meeting Mr. Akabayashi.