April 14, 2004

Japan To Review Mad Cow Testing Policy

Japan will review its policy of testing all slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease, a practice Tokyo has asked Washington to adopt as a condition for lifting a ban on U.S. beef imports, a local newspaper said on Wednesday.

Responding to the report, a government spokesman said a panel of experts would meet later this month to discuss issues related to mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), but that the agenda had not been set.

"The agenda has not been finalised...although in the course of the discussions between the experts the topic of testing all cattle may come up," the spokesman with the Food Safety Commission said.

The daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) said a government commission overseeing food safety would begin reviewing the current practice of testing all slaughtered cattle for BSE.

The panel due to meet this month is attached to the commission. The commission has also invited Yoshihiro Ozawa, special adviser to the world animal health body OIE, to speak on global issues related to BSE and the Nikkei said it expected he would not be fully supportive of the blanket testing in his speech on Thursday.

Washington has been pressuring Japan to resume imports of American beef, halted since the discovery late last December of the United States' first case of mad cow disease.

Talks have snagged over Japan's insistence that the United States follow it practice of a blanket test on all slaughtered cattle, or adopt an equivalent measure, which Washington has refused saying it is too costly and not scientifically justified.

Tokyo's ban has halted more than $1 billion of American beef purchases by Japan, while purchases from U.S. rival Australia have soared. In a bid to break a near four-month deadlock, a high-level U.S trade delegation is due to visit Tokyo later this month to discuss the ban.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday that USDA Undersecretary JB Penn will lead the American delegation, and that the visit was expected to take place April 24-25.

A rare human form of BSE -- variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease -- can result from eating contaminated animal products although there have been no reports of humans catching it in Japan.