The farm ministry adopted conditions Friday for ending the two-year-old import ban on U.S. and Canadian beef, and the government is expected to end the ban as early as Monday, ministry officials said.
The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry adopted the terms in question at a meeting on mad cow countermeasures.
The disease is formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
The terms include limiting the types of importable beef to that from cattle aged up to 20 months.
Among other key terms is the requirement that beef producers remove spinal cords and other specific risk materials that could transmit the disease to consumers more easily due to the tendency of the disease's pathogen to accumulate in those parts, they said.
U.S. authorities will quickly start designating beef-processing facilities qualified to process beef for the Japanese market after the government makes the formal decision to terminate the import ban for young beef.
After the designation procedure, the facilities will start processing young Japan-bound beef.
The first shipments from such facilities will likely be delivered to Japan later this month, according to the officials.
Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Jiro Kawasaki told a news conference the government "will stiffen" quarantine procedures for U.S.-grown beef until March 31 as a precaution if imports resume.
On Thursday, the Food Safety Commission submitted a report to the government, saying that "differences in degrees of risk" posed to human health between the stipulated North American beef and domestically produced beef could be kept "very small" if North American producers faithfully lived up to the conditions.
The government has decided that the commission's recommendation will effectively amount to authorizing a resumption of beef imports, the officials said.