South Korea said today that it has found bones, banned because of fears about mad cow disease, in the latest shipment of American beef and will revoke import approval for the U.S. facility that processed it.
The facility was identified as one belonging to Greeley-based meatpacker Swift & Co., one of 36 American plants authorized to handle meat for export to South Korea.
The country’s Agriculture and Forestry Ministry said rib bones were found Monday in one box of a 15.5-ton shipment that arrived in South Korea on Aug. 10.
The ministry said it will send the entire shipment back to the United States.
The U.S. facility, which had been suspended from shipping meat bound for South Korea on July 31 for a similar violation, will be barred from exporting to South Korea as Seoul has canceled the approval necessary for export, the ministry said in a statement.
The latest shipment had been sent July 29, two days before the suspension.
Scientists believe mad cow disease spreads when farmers feed cattle recycled meat and bones from infected animals. The cattle disease is also believed to be linked to the rare but fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
