Wednesday, February 25, 2004 Posted: 0218 GMT (10:18 AM HKT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States has suspended the import of all French meat and poultry products after a team of inspectors found problems in several French processing plants, a U.S. official says.
Steven Cohen, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, told CNN Tuesday the agency sent a letter to French officials informing them of the ban.
The agency said it would suspend the import of meats such as ham, pork products, pate, foie gras and others because of sanitation problems in some plants recently toured by U.S. inspectors.
Fresh meat is not included in the ban.
The suspension on French meat imports is effective Tuesday, although Cohen said products shipped before February 24 would be accepted into the country. The United States imported more than 976,000 pounds (442,713 kilograms) of meat products from France in 2003, he said.
The move came on the same day the European Union announced it would ban the import of live chickens and eggs from the United States following the discovery of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu in Texas. (Full story)
The EU said the ban would apply to all live bird and egg imports from the United States for one month until March 23 and follows a similar EU ban on imports of Thai poultry.
The United States is a major poultry exporter to EU states. A quarter of annual EU egg imports are from the U.S., about 13,000 tons of eggs worth 20 million euros ($25.17 million) in trade.
The USDA is working with its French counterparts to address the meat products problem, which Cohen said is the result of France's failure to maintain an inspection system equivalent to that of the United States.
U.S. officials who informed their French counterparts of the suspension said it was because the plants no longer corresponded with U.S. safety regulations for meat products, the press officer for France's agriculture minister told CNN in a phone interview from Paris.
The spokesman said the suspension deals with meat products such as foie gras and sausage, and said fresh meat was not affected.
He said French officials do not agree with the U.S. team's conclusions, which were made after a U.S. team visited 11 businesses between January 15 and February 5, but he refused further comment.
Cohen said of the 11 plants inspected, three were completely "de-listed" and two others received notice of American intent to take them off the list of approved facilities.
He said until the French have a plan in place to address the issues raised by the inspection team and undergo additional inspections, the meat products will not be imported into the United States.
-- CNN Medical Producer Saundra Young in Washington and Supervising Producer Justin O'Kelly in London contributed to this report.
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