(JP)All meat-and-bone meal feed banned

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20011002a5.htm

 

ALLAYING MAD COW CONCERNS

All meat-and-bone meal feed banned

 

The government formally announced Monday that it will

impose a comprehensive ban starting Thursday on the

distribution of imported and domestically produced

meat-and-bone meal, an animal feed suspected of

causing mad cow disease.

 

Tsutomu Takebe, minister of agriculture, forestry and

fisheries, holds a news conference at the ministry.

 

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry said

the temporary move is in response to concerns among

consumers over the safety of meat-and-bone meal, a

protein feed made from the crushed internal organs,

skin and bones of cows.

 

Fears over mad cow disease have increased since it was

confirmed Sept. 22 that a dairy cow that had been

owned by a farm in Chiba Prefecture had been infected

with the wasting disease, formally called bovine

spongiform encephalopathy. It was the first case of

mad cow outside Europe.

 

Farm minister Tsutomu Takebe told a news conference

that the government will burn all meat-and-bone meal

already on the market.

 

The farm ministry had earlier opposed a proposal to

ban meat-and-bone meal made for pigs and chickens,

maintaining that these animals cannot become infected

with the fatal brain-wasting disease.

 

" The total ban is meant to allay consumer concerns

that meat-and-bone meal produced for pigs and chickens

is being mixed with feed for cows, " Takebe said.

 

Prefectural governments will buy the meal from

distributors before burning it. The national

government will cover either all or part of the costs

in a supplementary budget for the current fiscal year,

government officials said.

 

A panel of experts and consumer representatives that

will be set up as early as Friday will consider the

duration of the ban, the ministry said.

 

Since Sept. 18, feeding the meal to cows has been

prohibited to prevent a spread of the disease. This

followed a 1996 ministry directive not to feed the

meal to cows.

 

The infection was confirmed by the Veterinary

Laboratories Agency, a British government agency.

 

The infected cow, a 5-year-old Holstein born in

Hokkaido and raised at a dairy farm in Shiroi, Chiba

Prefecture, was first found on Aug. 6 to have symptoms

of mad cow disease.

 

Mad cow disease was first uncovered in Britain in

1986. It is thought to cause the fatal human variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

 

Earlier, the farm ministry planned to implement a

total ban on imports of meat-and-bone meal and was

reluctant to impose a ban on the domestically produced

variant.

 

But calls have mounted for a total ban on the meal

because it has emerged that many farmers are using the

meal meant for pigs and chickens to feed cows.

 

The route of the Holstein's infection has also not yet

been identified.

 

The Japan Times: Oct. 2, 2001

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