SAN JOSE - JAPAN suspended purchases of Costa Rican meat after receiving imports of US beef tongue wrongly labelled as being from Costa Rica, a report said here on Friday.

The Nation newspaper said that the National Service of Animal Health had confirmed that it sent a cargo of 1,400 kilogrammes of beef tongue to Japan originally from the United States but certified as being Costa Rican.

The Japanese health authority's measure would affect four Costa Rican meat plants, including export company Patagonia Beef which recently set up in the Central American country.

Costa Rica exported 817 tonnes of bovine meat to Asia, mainly Japan, in 2007, for a value of some US$3.6 million (S$5.1 million), the report said.

Last year Costa Rica exported a total of 14,040 tonnes of meat worldwide, for some US$35.5 million, according to figures from the Corporation for Farm Promotion.

Japan banned US beef in December 2003 after the brain-wasting cattle disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was found in a US herd. Japan had until then been the US cattle industry's biggest export market.

But Tokyo in July 2006 agreed to resume US beef imports on condition the cattle were not more than 20 months old at the time of slaughter, with brains, spinal cords and other risky parts removed. -- AFP