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Japan Detects 16th Mad Cow Case; Animal To Be Incinerated

Today 3/27/2005 7:41:00 AM


Japan Detects 16th Mad Cow Case; Animal To Be Incinerated


TOKYO (AP)--Japan has confirmed its 16th case of mad cow disease in a

9-year-old cow from northern Japan, the government said Sunday.



Experts concluded that the Holstein cow from Teshio town in northern Hokkaido
prefecture was infected with mad cow after analyzing samples taken this week,

the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.



"All meat, internal organs and parts from this cattle will be incinerated,

and there is no danger that they will be circulated in the market," the

ministry statement said.



Eating beef from an infected cow is thought to cause the fatal human variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Older cattle are considered more vulnerable to the

disease.



Tokyo has checked every slaughtered cow before it enters the food supply

since 2001, after its first discovery of mad cow disease, known formally as

bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.



It has also blocked all U.S. beef imports since the first U.S. case of mad

cow was confirmed in December 2003.



Japan's latest case comes amid increasingly insistent calls from Washington

that Tokyo lift its 15-month ban, amid cautious support in Japan for Japanese

testing standards to be eased, which would clear the way for U.S. beef products

to re-enter the market.



Japan's food safety board is considering waiving tests for cattle aged 20

months or younger -a proposal made by the United States on the basis of

scientific evidence indicating that the proteins associated with mad cow

disease do not accumulate in cows so young.



A Japanese government panel has backed that proposal. But Tokyo says a final

decision rests with Japan's Food Safety Commission, which meets again Monday.



Despite pressure from visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this

month, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura refused to set a time frame,

repeating that Tokyo's top priority was food safety.



Before the ban, Japan was the most lucrative overseas market for U.S. beef

producers, buying $1.7 billion in beef in 2003.
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