Japan is expected to lift a ban on U.S. beef as early as next week, in line with a June agreement between the two governments that U.S. beef shipments to Japan would restart after Japan inspects U.S. beef processing plants to confirm they operate in compliance with Japan's safety requirements.

Japanese inspectors have been in the United States since June 24, checking each of the 35 U.S. beef processing plants authorised by the U.S. government as suppliers to Japan. They are set to end their mission later on Friday after meeting with U.S. government officials.

The inspectors will compile a report on their audit of the U.S. plants after they return to Japan on Sunday. The government will use the report as a basis for its final decision on lifting the ban on imports of U.S. beef.

"We will review their report carefully," Nakagawa said.

Nakagawa will leave Japan on Saturday for talks with ministers from major farm exporting and importing countries at the Geneva headquarters of the World Trade Organisation.

But the government can make a decision on U.S. beef before Nakagawa returns to Japan on July 31, a ministry official said.

Japan banned U.S. beef in December 2003 following the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease. Japan had been the top importer of U.S. beef, buying 240,000 tonnes valued at $1.4 billion in 2003.

Last December Japan lifted the two-year-old ban on condition that the meat came only from animals aged up to 20 months and that risk materials such as spinal cords that can spread mad cow disease were removed before shipment.

But a month later it suspended imports after Japanese inspectors found some of the banned materials in a U.S. shipment.

Japanese opposition parties and consumer groups have urged the government to keep the ban in place until Washington tightens its measures against mad cow disease to the level of Japan. They have said even the current U.S. programme, before the 90 percent cutback, is insufficient.

The U.S. government now tests only 1 percent of the 35 million cattle slaughtered in the country each year, compared with the Japanese system, which requires all cattle older than 20 months to be tested.

Japan's Food Safety Commission has recommended that the United States expand its mad cow surveillance programme in order to gauge accurately the prevalence of the brain-wasting disease in the country and to take appropriate risk-management steps.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will reduce its cattle-testing level to 40,000 head per year. That will be down from an average of about 30,000 head each month since June 2004.