In an effort to reopen an important trading market, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley met Monday with the Japanese Ambassador to the U-S. American beef is still not being taken by Japan, following a Mad Cow disease scare some 14 months ago. Grassley says the meeting with the ambassador went as well as he’d hoped. Grassley said the ambassador would take the “strong voices” to Tokyo though he could provide no date on which imports might resume. “I arranged this meeting to impress upon the ambassador the great importance that I, as well as other senators, place upon the reopening of the Japanese market to U.S. beef. I told the Ambassador that it’s essential that Japan remove this trade irritant between our countries in a science-based and timely way,” Grassley says.