SEC. JOHANNS: I'm going to, we'll issue this statement, but I'll go ahead and read it just so we have it on tape here. This relates to South Korea's rejection of the third shipment of beef. I'm very disappointed in the decision by South Korea to reject all three U.S. beef shipments sent since South Korea leaders announced on September 11, '06, that their border is open to U.S. beef. The rejection of the third shipment clearly illustrates that South Korea officials are determined to find an excuse to reject all beef products from the United States.

There is absolutely no food safety issue with any of these shipments. I find it difficult to accept that bone fragments the size of one-half of a grain of rice were found through visual inspection of 10 metric tons of beef as is South Korea's claim regarding the third shipment -- despite the fact that it went through unusually rigorous inspection by the U.S. exporter before it was shipped.

I can only conclude that these actions are designed to restrict beef trade. Today South Korean officials have sent the message that their market is not commercially viable for U.S. beef. South Korea is attempting to claim its border is open to U.S. beef while refusing to allow trade to take place. This is unacceptable and certainly not the way trading partners should work with one another.

It is our intention to work with the U.S. trade representative to examine all options available to the U.S. to legitimately open the South Korean market to U.S. beef. Our objective is to implement a trade agreement for beef that reflects science based international guidelines and facilitates real trade.

REPORTER: Are you going to change the protocols to just, to maybe protect the U.S. exporters from themselves by just saying you can't export, or not provide any?

SEC. JOHANNS: I don't believe it's necessary. I would imagine if you got on the phone today and started calling U.S. exporters who might be interested in exporting beef to Korea they would say that there's no chance they are going to at this point.

It's probably not going to be a surprise to anyone that these loads were really an attempt to try to see if this market was sincere, whether it was genuinely open. These were not huge, huge quantities of beef. They were sent into the marketplace with rigorous inspection here in the United States, delivered over to Korea, and they found a way to reject it. And so I don't think it's anything that I would do or not do. I think our market has just simply concluded that this is not commercially viable. They can't afford to send product over there only to face whatever the reason is for rejecting the product and then pick up all of the cost of that. I think effectively today South Korea's market is as closed to United States as it was six months ago.

REPORTER: Is there any chance of an FTA agreement under these type of conditions for U.S. beef?

SEC. JOHANNS: You know, as I said before I don't link them. I'm not saying FTA and beef are absolutely linked together, but the reality is when you go up to the Hill you've got to somehow find the support necessary to get a free trade agreement approved. You've literally got to go senator by senator and House member by House member to put enough votes together to get to a majority. I can assure you, I don't have any doubt about it whatsoever that if I went up on the Hill today trying to put the votes together, every single senator and House member would be asking me about beef. And in that atmosphere it just becomes very difficult if not impossible to get the votes together to get a free trade agreement passed.

So even though they are not technically linked, not legally linked, it's not something they're sitting there negotiating every day, the reality is that some way, somehow, some day you've got to go up there and get the votes. And with this kind of action I just think it would be impossible to achieve.

REPORTER: Is it even worth continuing negotiations at this point?

SEC. JOHANNS: We're always willing to sit down if they will sit down with us reasonably. If they will sit down and work through this issue and solve the problem then we're ready to go, and if the trade representative were to ask me today, Are you open to the possibility of sitting down and resolving this with South Korea? my answer is, Absolutely. If they come to the table in a sincere effort to find a solution to this problem, absolutely we would do that.

But today it just seems to be an effort to find a reason to reject the beef. It is hard for me to emphasize how absolutely insignificant this is and how far away we are from food safety. It's just -- I mean we're not even on the same planet. That's how far they are from where we are at, and it doesn't make any sense. Even they will acknowledge these aren't food safety issues.

And so here we are with our shippers bearing costs, probably people in Korea bearing costs for the rejection of the load where it looks to me like they've just tried to find a reason to reject it.

REPORTER: Have you received any assurances from the South Koreans through whatever channels that this shipment may have been, was going to be accepted?

SEC. JOHANNS: I can tell you this, that the impression we had was that the third shipment was going though the process without difficulty. And I had that impression until about late yesterday afternoon. I can tell you, no one could make promises to me but it just seemed like this one was going to get through the process. It seemed to be going better. But then late yesterday I was made aware that it looked like they were going to find reasons to reject the shipment. So as of late yesterday I became convinced -- it wasn't confirmed until I came in this morning, but it sure looked like that was going to happen as of late yesterday.

REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, are there any other shipments that we should be watching out that maybe in a similar fashion --

SEC. JOHANNS: I don't think we have anything else heading that direction, and I'll be very surprised if anything does head that direction until this is resolved.

REPORTER: (unclear) what happens then?

SEC. JOHANNS: Well, next step could be consultations. I mean we could literally sit down and try to resolve this. I mean you know the drill, there's everything from that to just saying, look, we can't solve the problem, and heading to the WTO to find a solution there. That's certainly not a quick and easy solution either. So my hope is that reasonable people will sit down and try to solve the problem.

WTO process is cumbersome, it's expensive, and it's there if you need it but my hope is that we can bring people together. I will tell you my hope would be that reasonable people can solve the problem.

REPORTER: But you wouldn't rule out WTO?

SEC. JOHANNS: I'm not ruling anything out today. You know when you get into that area; the trade representative really drives that more than Mike Johanns. But my hope is we can figure out a way to get this resolved.

REPORTER: (unclear) WTO -- possibly you said you don't rule it out, is it truly on the table, and (unclear) has been in South Korea for talks for the last few days.

SEC. JOHANNS: I don't think anything, any possibility, I wouldn't take anything off the table at the moment. So your question, is it really a real possibility? Yes, I'm confident it is.

REPORTER: Can we just ask you to make a brief statement on one other thing if you're able to?

SEC. JOHANNS: If I'm able to, yes.

REPORTER: There's, I know USDA is keeping an eye on what's been going on with this talk about the food poisoning outbreak in New Jersey, and today it looks like it's in FDA's bailiwick, but its green onions. I want to see if you can offer some thought on that.

SEC. JOHANNS: I can offer this. It does look like it's going to be in FDA's jurisdiction, but of course on food safety issues we will cooperate and assist in any investigation that they do. Anything where USDA can be helpful, we will help. Our goal is to do everything we can to make food safety absolutely seamless. So we work together with them very, very well.

You know actually if you look at the overall numbers in terms of food safety, the numbers are definitely headed in the right direction in so many categories. We are having a positive impact in the area of food safety. So I guess about what I can offer today is this issue will work with the FDA, we'll do everything we can to assist them in that effort.

REPORTER: At this point is there anything that you can do to reassure the South Koreans that U.S. beef is safe, or is your interpretation of the situation so far away from actual safety concerns that you've done everything you can do?

SEC. JOHANNS: Yes, it is not a safety issue. Even Korea, I believe, is acknowledging this is not a safety issue. This is a hypertechnical effort to try to find a reason not to accept U.S. beef, and that may be very blunt but it's true. This is just literally a situation where it became evident that they were looking for a way to reject beef at their border. And like I said, that's no way to do trade.

I mean you can do that with everything. You could do that with tires, you could do that with cars, you could do that with any product out there, but it would bring trade to a halt. Terri wanted me to mention, and this is a good point, I did talk to Susan Schwab this morning; actually our phone call was arranged ahead of this because we had some other issues to talk about. But we did talk about Korean beef, and I sent my statement over to her so she would have a copy of that statement.

REPORTER: Can you offer anything on what you had said?

SEC. JOHANNS: We didn't talk about a specific approach. There was some general conversation about sitting down with South Korea, but I can tell you nothing's off the table but I can't tell you today that this is going to result in a WTO case or anything like that. We just didn't have that much of a conversation. We spoke total for about 15 or 20 minutes and included some other topics too.