September 13, 2004

 

 

Japan To Limit US Beef Imports To Cows 20 Months Or Less
 
Japan will limit the type of beef products it consents to import to those made from cows aged 20 months or younger, without demanding those cows be tested for mad cow disease, Kyodo News reported, citing Japan's agriculture minister.
 
"We will not drop the condition that (other countries) apply the same treatment as that levied domestically" even if the government eases its stance on blanket testing for the disease in line with Thursday's recommendation by the Food Safety Commission, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei told a news conference.
 
"We have to demand that (foreign governments) adopt an equivalent stance," he said.
 
The recommendation referred to the difficulty of detecting the brain-wasting disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in cows aged 20 months or younger using the current BSE testing methods, effectively calling on the government to exclude such cows from testing in a move deemed as tilting toward restarting U.S. beef imports.
 
Kamei's remarks amounted to rejecting a U.S. request that Japan remove cows aged 24 months and younger from the BSE testing requirement.
 
"It is necessary (for foreign governments) to take the same measures as Japan's in regards to the removal requirement for specific dangerous body parts," Kamei said.
 
Japan has "not yet" produced any agreement with the United States on when to resume bilateral talks on beef trade, he said.
 
Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi told a news conference, "It is necessary to hold a dialogue with consumers" when it comes to the issue of softening the blanket testing requirement.
 
"Diplomatic negotiations will commence only after we secure the understanding of consumers," he said.
 
"A conclusion on this matter will not be able to be obtained so speedily," he added.
 
Since Japan found its first BSE case in 2001, it has imposed the blanket testing rule, while demanding that meat processors remove specific body parts such as brains and spinal cords that tend to accumulate prion, an abnormal protein deemed as BSE's chief cause, from cows slaughtered for beef allowed to be put on store shelves.
 
BSE becomes detectable when a prion accumulates to a certain extent in the brains of cattle, so available testing methods are said inapplicable to cows 20 months or younger.
 
The age line was drawn in view of the fact that the youngest among the 11 cases of cows so far found in Japan to have BSE was 21 months old, Kyodo reported.

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