Japan struggles to contain mad cow outbreak

Japan is the only Asian country so far where cattle have been affected by the brain-wasting disease

TOKYO, Japan -- Japan appears to be struggling to contain the spread of mad cow disease after officials revealed a suspected fourth case of the brain-wasting disease has been discovered, this time in the west of the country.

A 40-month-old Holstein cow slaughtered at a meat-processing center in Tsuyama, 600 kilometers (340 miles) west of Tokyo, tested positive in an initial examination, local government official Shinichi Hanaoka told the Associated Press Tuesday.

Hanaoka said more reliable follow-up tests were planned at the Kobe Quarantine office in western Japan and an agricultural and veterinary university on the northern island of Hokkaido.

The results of those tests would be known in a few days, he said.

Japan is the only country in Asia where cattle have been affected by the disease, which has ravaged Europe's beef industry.

Late last month Japan said it would slaughter all 5,100 cows fed with meat-and-bone meal, one day after a second case of mad cow disease was found.

Asia's first mad cow case was discovered in Japan on September 10 on a farm in Chiba, near Tokyo.

Since then a cow in Hokkaido, and one in Gunma, north of Tokyo, have been confirmed with the disease.

Source of infection

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Authorities have been unable to trace the source of the infection but Reuters reports officials saying Tuesday that in the three confirmed cases the cows had been fed a milk substitute containing a Dutch-made animal fat.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to spread through recycled meat and bones from infected animals used in cattle feed.

It is linked to a human brain-wasting disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which has killed about 100 people in Europe and is believed to spread through eating infected meat.

The Dutch animal fat is believed to have been imported to Japan and processed into a milk substitute at a plant of Scientific Feed Laboratory Co in Takasaki, north of Tokyo, Reuters reports officials saying.

Scientific Feed Laboratory Co is a subsidiary of the National Federation of Agricultural Co-operative Associations (Zennoh).

"We don't know yet when the animal fat was imported," said a farm ministry official.

Imports banned

Japan banned imports of all cattle-related products from the European Union early this year.

The officials said 21 cases of mad cow disease have been confirmed in the Netherlands since 1997.

Japan's farm ministry will send two officials to the Netherlands soon to investigate whether dangerous cattle parts were mingled with the fat.

Shares in Japan's meat processors and restaurant chains have tumbled since the September outbreak, driving several to cut sales and profit estimates for this year.

Experts say it may take years before confidence in beef recovers in Japan, despite government assurances that homegrown beef is safe to eat.

The scare has prompted meat-eaters in Japan to eye alternatives such as pork, chicken and fish.

Denial

British scientists discovered BSE in 1986 and linked the disease a decade later to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Investigators have long linked the disease to meat-and-bone meal (MBM) made from the bones and body parts of infected cows.

Japan's farm ministry denied on Monday that it had encouraged farmers to use MBM in the mid-1990s.

It said an article contributed by a ministry official to a weekly agricultural magazine in February 1996 did not represent the ministry's position on the use of MBM, saying the official wrote the article as a private opinion.

The weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun said in its December 13 edition that an employee of a livestock laboratory affiliated with the ministry had encouraged the use of MBM for cow feed and explained how to use it.

The article was written about eight years after Britain banned the use of MBM as feed for cows.

The ministry banned MBM imports from Britain in March 1996 and ordered in April the livestock industry not to use MBM in animal feed for cows.

Japan has 4.5 million cows, including dairy cows.