Japan to ban EU beef imports

[Guest guest]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20001222a2.htm

 

Japan to ban EU beef imports

Move reflects growing fear of mad cow disease

 

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry on Thursday decided to ban

imports of European Union beef, processed beef foodstuffs and cow sperm

starting in January to prevent mad cow disease from spreading to Japanese

farms, ministry officials said.

Japan has already banned the use of animals from 28 countries as material

for making medicines, cosmetics and animal feed, as well as the import of

animal intestines for making sausages from some countries where animals are

suspected of being infected with the disease.

 

With Thursday's decision, the entire ban will also apply to fertilized and

unfertilized cow eggs and remain in force until the safety of EU-produced

beef and related products can be verified, they said.

 

Importers will also be barred from bringing in beef and related products

from Liechtenstein and Switzerland, which are not EU members.

 

The ministry took the steps in view of outbreaks of mad cow disease in EU

countries that have caused serious anxieties in the EU community.

 

Earlier in the day, an advisory council to the ministry on mad cow disease,

headed by University of Tokyo professor Takashi Onodera, recommended the

ministry impose a ban.

 

Japan imported 740 tons of beef produced in the EU, Liechtenstein and

Switzerland in the seven months to Oct. 31. In all of fiscal 1999, which

ended in March 2000, it imported 463 tons from those areas. Imports have

been gaining momentum since the early 1990s.

 

However, beef shipments from the EU and the two countries accounted for less

than 0.1 percent of Japan's beef imports in fiscal 1999, which totaled

784,600 tons.

 

Beef produced in the United States and Australia -- where mad cow disease

has not been reported -- accounts for some 94 percent of Japan's annual beef

imports.

 

Thus, the latest ban " will not adversely impact the supply of beef in the

Japanese market, " a ministry official said.

 

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is thought to spread

to humans as the brain-wasting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. BSE wasn't

identified until 1986, but by the mid-1990s, Britain was seeing cases every

year. The EU banned exports of British beef and feed in 1996, and millions

of British cows were incinerated.

 

The disease later appeared on the European continent and has reappeared in

recent months in Germany after an increase in France.

 

There have been no reports of mad cow disease in Japan. A number of patients

who underwent brain surgery using dura mater imported from Germany have

developed CJD. Since 1996, Japan has banned the use of cattle from Britain

for producing pharmaceutical products.

 

The Japan Times: Dec. 22, 2000

© All rights reserved