INTERVIEW-U.S. hopes '09 beef exports to Japan near 100,000T

* U.S. beef exports to S.Korea helped by won appreciation

* Beef industry looks forward to working with new Japan govt

TOKYO, Sept 10 - The U.S. meat industry is slightly behind its target of 100,000 tonnes of exports to Japan this year, although food safety worries that deterred consumers in the immediate wake of mad cow disease have subsided.

Japan was the biggest export market for U.S. beef until bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in the United States in December 2003, prompting Tokyo to impose a ban.

Tokyo has allowed the United States to export beef to Japan since 2006, on condition that it is taken from cattle aged 20 months or younger.

"We are a little bit behind our forecast (for Japan)," Philip Seng, head of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed the United States exported roughly 40,000 tonnes of beef to Japan in the first six months of the year, up 17 percent from a year earlier, he added.

Seng said the U.S. industry hoped to come in somewhere near its forecast, adding that a recent consumer survey showed that consumers' positive views of U.S. beef outweighed the negative views.

U.S. beef has yet to fully regain its foothold in the Japanese market, however, due to the age restriction.

The South Korean market was looking up partly due to the appreciation of the won, Seng said. South Korea, which had also stopped U.S. beef imports due to mad cow disease,lifted the ban a year ago.

USDA figures show that South Korea imported about 25,700 tonnes of U.S. beef in the first six months of the year, compared to 244 tonnes in the comparable period a year earlier.

Australia, the U.S.'s rival, has stepped up exports to both countries in the absence of American beef.

The U.S. beef industry is eager to see a full return of the meat to Japan, a market to which its annual exports reached 250,000 tonnes or more prior to the ban.

The United States has urged Japan to allow beef imports from cattle of all ages, in line with international guidelines set by the World Organization for Animal Health.

Seng said he looked forward to engaging with the new Japanese government.

Yukio Hatoyama, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, is set to be voted in as prime minister by parliament on Sept. 16 after the party won a landslide victory in a poll at the end of August that threw out the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Seng said there were some worries about working with the new government, but he did not expect them to last long.

"The anxiety is in not knowing who to talk to, how to engage etc, etc, ... but that will be resolved pretty quickly," he said.