SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said Thursday that it will lower its quarantine standards this month over banned bone fragments in American beef shipments, paving the way for the resumption of U.S. beef imports.

South Korea — once America's third-largest overseas beef market — notified the United States of the plan during negotiations in Washington on Tuesday, and the U.S. did not oppose it, the South's Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

South Korea agreed to resume imports of U.S. beef last year following a three-year ban triggered by fears of mad cow disease. But American beef has not reached South Korean consumers because quarantine authorities have rejected all shipments for containing the tiny bone fragments that South Korea fears could potentially harbor mad cow disease.

Under the lowered standards, bone fragments will still be unacceptable. But Seoul will return only individual boxes of meat that contain the bone fragments, instead of rejecting the entire shipment, the statement said.

The two sides have haggled over the issue for months. Washington has strongly defended the safety of American beef, accusing Seoul of using the issue of bone fragments to impose an unofficial import ban.

The U.S. does not appear fully satisfied with the deal. The ministry statement said the U.S., although it did not oppose the compromise, was skeptical about whether U.S. beef producers would attempt again to export to South Korea after experiencing the rejections.

THORN IN RELATIONSHIP

The beef dispute has been a sore point between the two countries that are seeking to forge a free trade agreement. Their eighth round of free trade negotiations opened in Seoul on Thursday.

Though the beef issue is not formally part of the free trade talks, and is the responsibility of the two nations' agriculture officials, it is clearly casting a shadow over the negotiations.

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler, Washington's chief negotiator in the free trade talks, appeared cool to the new quarantine idea.

"The core of (South) Korea's proposal here is based on what we call a 'zero tolerance' for bone chips," she told a press conference. "We just can't agree to that proposal given that it's not based on science and it's just commercially unfeasible."

Cutler added that the U.S. will settle for nothing but full access.

"We continue to underscore the importance of Korea reopening fully their beef market," she said. "Our Congress continues to make it abundantly clear to us that there will be no FTA without a full reopening of the Korea beef market."