Testing confirms first mad cow disease in Japan

Associated Press

TOKYO — A test has shown that a Japanese animal slaughtered in August carried mad cow disease, the Ministry of Agriculture said Saturday, confirming the first known case of the deadly brain-wasting illness in Asia.

The Japanese government announced last week that the 5-year-old dairy cow in central Japan might have suffered from the sickness and sent a tissue sample to experts in Britain for a conclusive diagnosis. The results came back Friday, the ministry said.

Officials do not know how the cow contracted the disease, but investigators are focusing on animal feed as the likely cause, said Kazuki Ikeda, an official at the ministry’s animal health division.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to spread by recycling meat and bones from infected animals back into cattle feed. The illness, which has ravaged Europe’s cattle industry, is thought to cause the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans who eat infected meat.

The Ministry of Agriculture was considering a recommendation by a task force of experts to swiftly prohibit imports of feed containing meat and bone, Ikeda said.

Officials have been scrambling to reassure Japanese consumers and persuade other countries, including the United States and several Asian nations, to drop bans imposed on Japanese meat after last week’s announcement.

Worries over food safety have taken a toll on Japan’s meat industry.

Many wholesalers and retailers told the Ministry of Agriculture earlier this week that their sales have fallen by 5 percent to 20 percent because of recent mad cow concerns, ministry official Hiroyuki Kobayashi said Wednesday.

Cattle breeders’ earnings have been falling for years as consumers concerned about overseas outbreaks of mad cow disease stay away from beef.

To restore faith in meat products, the Health Ministry announced Wednesday it was expanding testing for the disease to as many as 1 million cattle. The inspection is modeled on similar measures taken by the European Union.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture said Friday that a separate inspection of 3.3 million living cows nationwide — 75 percent of all domestic cattle — performed after last week’s announcement suggested no others were infected.

However, officials only looked for external symptoms of the disease, meaning that it was possible that the illness is dormant in some of the animals, Ikeda said.