Japan Reviews New Recommendations on Mad Cow Testing Standards
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Japan is reviewing recommended changes to international mad cow screening standards that may be adopted at a May meeting of the World Organization for Animal Health, an agriculture ministry official said.
The changes would recommend countries forgo mad cow tests as long as cattle parts thought to harbor the disease are removed prior to international shipment, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.
Japan is weighing the proposal, said Kazuhiro Yoshida, an official in charge of food safety at the agriculture ministry. Yoshida declined to detail the possible changes and denied the Nikkei's report that Japan has already decided to oppose them.
Relaxed screening would contrast with current standards in Japan, which won't import beef from countries where mad cow has surfaced unless the nation first tests all its slaughtered cattle. Japan has barred U.S. beef, which isn't screened, since December 2003, when the U.S. discovered its first case of mad cow.
The Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, of which Japan is a member, is also proposing that the mandatory age at which disease-harboring parts are removed from cattle carcasses be raised to 30 months or older, from the current age of 12 months or older, according to the Nikkei report.
Such parts, thought to contain the agent triggering mad cow disease, can include the brain and bones, according to the report.
Member nations will vote on the proposed changes at the May meeting. While the organization's recommendations are not binding, relaxed standards may encourage the U.S. government to intensify its pressure on Japan to resume U.S. beef imports, the Nikkei said.
U.S. Trade
Japan, which purchased about $1.7 billion worth of U.S. beef in 2003, was the biggest overseas buyer before the ban. In October, Japan agreed to resume importing U.S. beef from cattle younger than 21 months, and both countries have since been negotiating details of how and when to resume trade.
Scientists say humans who eat certain parts of animals infected with mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, may contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a similar brain-wasting ailment. The human illness has been blamed for 149 deaths in the U.K. since 1995, according to the National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland.
