JAPAN SEEN REDUCING BEEF, PORK INTERVENTION PRICES The Agriculture Ministry is expected to reduce official intervention prices for beef and pork in 1987/88 starting in April, but the cutback ratio has not been set yet, industry sources said. Production prices, the basis for setting intervention prices, have been falling because of declining compound feed prices due to low coarse grain import prices, they said. Last November an advisory panel urged the government to work on reducing officially set high farm product prices to levels closer to international values, the sources added. In Japan the government maintains a price stabilisation zone system for beef and pork to support domestic producers. The stabilisation zone is kept by the semi-government Livestock Industry Promotion Corp (LIPC) through a buffer stock operation in the wholesale market. The 1987/88 beef and pork price stabilisation zone will be set by the end of March after an advisory panel to the Agriculture Ministry recommends the price zone at a meeting on March 25, ministry officials said. At present, the standard or bottom price of castrated wagyu beef, known as marbled beef, is 1,400 yen per kilo, while its ceiling is 1,820, they said. The standard price of other beef, mainly produced from dairy steers, is now 1,090 yen per kilo and the ceiling is 1,420, the officials said. The pork standard price is now 540 yen per kilo and the ceiling 760. They said the domestic beef intervention price influences imported beef selling prices on the domestic market. Japan sets an annual beef import quota. A semi-government body imports most of this and releases it to wholesalers or processors in line with the standard price of other beef categories in an attempt to avoid jeoparadising domestic beef prices, they said.