Meat Market: The U.S. Meat Export Foundation “has a long-range plan to build confidence in U.S. beef among Japanese consumers” according to a report at CattleNetwork.com. Good news, I guess, although an official acknowledges that rebuilding confidence will take time. I wonder if it occurs to anyone in the cattle community that it would have been easier—and cheaper—just to bring American beef safety monitoring standards up to those of the rest of the world. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the industry’s reasons for resisting those standards were ideological (regulation is bad!) rather than pragmatic.