TOKYO — Japan plans this week to officially approve a partial resumption of U.S. beef imports, which had been banned because of fears of mad cow disease, said a news report Friday.

The Kyodo News agency report comes hours after Japan's farm minister said a cutback in the U.S. government's testing program for mad cow disease won't affect Tokyo's decision on resuming U.S. beef imports.

Japan had lifted the ban late last year, but then re-imposed it in January after inspectors found a shipment containing banned beef parts. Japan is in the final stages of lifting the ban again, with Japanese inspectors returning home yesterday after a monthlong monitoring mission of U.S. meat processing plants, a condition Japan requested in June when it agreed in principle to resume imports.

During their inspection tour in the U.S., Japanese experts visited 35 beef processing plants to see if they comply with safeguard measures exclusively added for their exports to Japan.

The team will compile a report from the inspections, and the government will approve the facilities considered adequately prepared, Kyodo said. A facility with problems will be asked to take measures for improvement and be re-evaluated, Kyodo said.

Japan was a huge consumer of U.S. beef before 2003, when it first imposed an import ban over concerns about possible mad cow disease — formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE — among U.S. cattle.