AGRICULTURE Secretary Arthur Yap yesterday said certain restrictions he imposed last July on imported boneless and bone-in beef from cattle of all ages coming from the United States and Canada have been lifted.

Yap said the previously restricted meat products from the two countries can now enter the country freely after the Office Inter-nationale des Epizooties (OIE) or Animal Health Organization declared the United States and Canada as countries with "controlled risks" of mad cow of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) disease.

Yap also banned that time the importation of domestic and wild birds, poultry and its products from Virginia and Nebraska following official confirmation by US authorities of the existence of the avian influenza (AI) or bird flu virus in these American states.

The ban was based on a July 23, 2007 report submitted by Dr. John Clifford, the deputy administrator of the US Department of Agri-culture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to the OIE on the presence of low pathogenic strains of the AI virus H5N1 in Virginia and H7N9 in Nebraska.

Yap said the sanctions are necessary to protect the citizenry’s health and the country’s poultry industry which has remained free of bird flu ever since the H5N1 virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003.