March 8, 2004

Japan Finds Twelfth Possible Case Of Mad Cow

Japan may have found its twelfth mad cow case after tests on a cow in northern Japan have turned out positive for mad cow disease, the Agriculture Ministry said Sunday.
 
The 7-year, 10-month-old Holstein was shown to have had the brain wasting illness in a second round of tests conducted by a German research institute, the ministry said in a statement.
 
An expert panel will convene Tuesday to review the evidence and confirm whether the cow actually had the disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.
 
The animal was raised on a farm in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island, a region where four other BSE infected cows have come from.
 
Authorities are also awaiting final results for a cow from Miyagi prefecture in northern Japan that tested positive for the disease last week. The 16-year, 6-month old beef cow was found Thursday after being brought to a slaughterhouse.
 
If both cows are found to have BSE, they would be Japan's 11th and 12th discoveries of mad cow disease. The country found its first case in September 2001.
 
Under a comprehensive screening system put in place after the initial outbreak, Japan tests every cow that is killed before it enters the food supply. Tokyo has also banned the use of meat-and-bone meal - made from ruminant animal parts - in cattle feed, which authorities believe led to the outbreak.
 
Japan has credited its mad cow surveillance as a necessary, if expensive, precaution. Tokyo has banned U.S. beef imports since the first U.S. mad cow case was discovered in Washington state on Dec. 24, and has demanded that the U.S. adopt a blanket testing system before Tokyo would reopen its market - the most lucrative for U.S. beef before the ban.
 
Eating beef from a diseased cow is thought to cause the fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.