beef up

increase in size or number; fatten up

THE New York cut at many of Tokyo's finest steak restaurants has never been within a bull's roar of an American prairie. Nor has the Texas sirloin nor, for that matter, the Boston butt.

Ask any waiter the origin of the steak on the menu in a Tokyo restaurant and the most common answer is: it's Australian.

But, after two years off restaurant specials boards, the US is pressing more aggressively than ever to put its beef back on Japan's dinner tables, ending the $2.2 billion dominance of the lucrative market that Australia had in 2004.

Japan is edging closer to lifting the ban imposed on US beef after a case of BSE, or mad cow disease. Yesterday a scientific panel said it was close to recommending that US beef be allowed back into Japan, under strict conditions. The toughest new rule would confine the US industry to supplying beef no older than 20 months, considered low risk for BSE contamination. This would eliminate the US as a supplier of premium marbled beef, which comes from older cattle.

[ Australia beefs up a bull market ]