Yoshinoya Tokyo, the fast food chain famous for its beef products

The phrase "Where's the beef?" should take on a special significance these days, especially if you live in Japan. But the most interesting question out of all this is how could a little old side of beef pose a danger to Japan's national identity? That's what American and Canadian officials need to answer if they intend to get their cattle back on Japanese menus.

Since the discovery of two cattle infected with BSE or 'mad cow' disease, one in Canada back in spring of 2003, and one in the United States on Dec. 23, Japan has stopped imports of North American beef altogether.

Japan has been the biggest importer of American beef in the world, buying one-fourth of the $3.8 billion worth of beef the U.S. exported last year. This beef ban has of course had a disasterous affect on North American cattle markets as well as the Japanese food industry.

Canada and the U.S. have repeatedly met with Japanese officials to try and resolve the matter. Yet despite mounds of scientific evidence that the meat making it to market is safe, the Japanese government has stubbornly refused to look at reopening their market to North American beef.

Scientists believe mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephlopathy (BSE) is contracted by eating livestock feed containing cattle brains or spinal cords. It's possible people can get a human variant of the disease by eating beef infected with BSE.

Mindy Kotler, the Director of the Japanese Information Access Project in Washington, D.C. says the reason for the continued ban on beef has more to do with a sense of lost Japanese identity than it has with any real mistrust of the science.

"I think the Japanese are using mad cow as a very easy excuse," said Kotler. "You have a political elite that sees its future wrapped around a sense of Japanese identity.

"When you talk to the agriculture minister, he'll tell you Japan is not a meat eating nation. That's what Westerners do. See, the foreigners're eating contaminated food, but we're the pure Japanese."

Kotler says there have been nine cases of BSE in Japan in the last few years, four of them occuring in the last year alone. Part of the problem is that Japan only stopped feeding their cattle contaminated livestock feed one year ago. Canada and the United States stopped using this kind of cattle feed in 1996.

"I wouldn't touch anything in Japan," said an emphatic Kotler. "When I tell Japanese people there were nine cases, they look at me like I'm lying. They just didn't know."

Kotler believes most of the row is merely political posturing, with the Japanese trying desperately to show some positive results in the wake of the extensive government mishandling of BSE and other food safety related issues.

"This is a case between the political elites. The Japanese elites feel powerless to the outside world. They're very dependent on the U.S. on a whole range of things. There are very few things in which they can exert their ideas of national pride.

"They're trying to build that sense of national pride by standing up to the U.S. and protecting a central voting block in Japan, the rural community."

A lack of beef has forced Yoshinoya to look to new menu items.

The plight of the beefless Gyudon
The realities of Japanese reluctance to reopen their markets to American beef have not gone unnoticed by American officials.

In a recent article, Reuters news service reported American trade advisor David Hegwood, a member of a USDA delegation that traveled to Tokyo toward the end of January, said Japan's U.S. beef ban was doing "serious economic damage" to the U.S. beef industry and Japanese businesses.

As a result, one business in particular, Yoshinoya, is having to seriously re-examine its menu, as it literally runs out of beef.

Yoshinoya is one of the largest chain restaurants in Japan, with outlets at hundreds of locations across the country. Approximately 99 per cent of all the beef they use has been imported from the United States. The rest comes from Australia.

After the Japanese government instituted the beef ban, corporations like Yoshinoya watched with trepidation as beef prices in Japan soared by 30 per cent in January alone.

Yoshinoya's public relations manager, Yasunori Yoshimura, says their signature beef dish, Gyudon - a bowl of rice topped off with stir-fried beef and onion - is going to disappear from their menu.

"We have already created a new menu," said Yoshimura. This new menu, which includes five new dishes with choices of curry, grilled chicken, salmon, pork or tofu, is totally devoid of any beef.

The new fare has already been introduced, and Yoshinoya executives are hoping the Japanese public will warm to their new menu as beef is gradually, but quickly fazed out.

Though the beef ban hasn't hurt their business yet, Yoshimura says by the middle of February, his company will be completely out of beef stocks. He noted Yoshinoya has asked the Japanese Food Service Association to request the government reopen the market.

Japan still imports Australian beef, but there is not enough beef produced in Australia to satisfy the Japanese appetite, despite the government's protestations that beef consumption is not part of the Japanese identity.

At press time, the latest reports indicated another meeting was planned between U.S. and Japanese officials in early February to discuss the lifting of the ban. For companies like Yoshinoya, the end of the moritorium couldn't come soon enough.