Third U.S. beef shipment sent to South Korea by mistake

Third U.S. beef shipment sent to South Korea by mistake A U.S. beef exporter accused by South Korean officials of violating the country's import rules said Tuesday that the firm had done nothing wrong.
   At issue is a June shipment of 300 pounds of meat to South Korea that was only certified for U.S. markets and not for export. Korean officials stopped the meat shipment when it arrived on June 2 and sent it back. It was the third U.S.-only meat shipment to mistakenly arrive in South Korea since the country lifted a four-year ban on U.S. meat earlier this year. The ban was imposed over concerns related to mad cow disease.
   A spokesman for the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based exporter, Midamar Corp., told the Associated Press that his firm was not responsible because they did not send the four boxes of beef to South Korea.
   According to the firm, the boxes were instead sent to a South Korean company in California. Midamar refused to identify the firm, but said that the actual beef product did not violate any product specification set by the South Korean government. The only problem with the shipment, said Midamar, were labels on two boxes that bore the wrong shipping code for South Korea.
   In May, two beef shipments totaling 66.4 tons were mistakenly sent to South Korea. The Seoul government stopped all U.S. beef imports for four days while it investigated the two erroneous shipments. A California-based exporter, Am-Mex Service Co., was cited for sending the meat. The Korean government's Agriculture Ministry is still investigating the Tyson and Cargill owned processing plants that produced the meat.