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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 27, 2001

Japan to Kill 5,000 Cows to Check Disease

Japan's Agriculture Ministry said on Monday it would slaughter all of the 5,000-some cows that had been fed meat-and-bone meal (MBM), suspected to have caused the outbreak of mad-cow disease in Japan and elsewhere.


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Japan's Agriculture Ministry said on Monday it would slaughter all of the 5,000-some cows that had been fed meat-and-bone meal (MBM), suspected to have caused the outbreak of mad-cow disease in Japan and elsewhere. Japan last week confirmed a second case of the brain-wasting disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). According to the farm ministry's survey from September 12 and 30, about 5,129 cows had been fed with MBM.

Japan banned all MBM imports and the use of MBM as feed in early last month because infected meal was suspected to be the source of the disease. The ministry will slaughter and test the cows for the disease after its owners agree to sell the cattle to the government, Junshi Umetsu, an official with the ministry's livestock division, told reporters.

Of the 5,129 cows, some 300 heads were beef cattle and the remaining were dairy cattle ranging in age from two to eight years, Umetsu said. "All of the cows will be incinerated after the tests," he said. He said the slaughter of dairy cows would take some time since they would not be killed until they stop producing milk, he said.

Milk products from diseased cows are believed to be safe for consumption. The decision to slaughter the cows came after the Health Ministry said last Wednesday a five-year-old Holstein dairy cow in the northern island of Hokkaido had tested positive for mad cow disease. It was the second case of the disease in Japan after a Holstein in Chiba, near Tokyo, tested positive on September 10 in Asia's first outbreak of the disease, deepening a health scare that has already turned consumers away from beef.

Both cows found with the disease so far had been born before Japan placed a ban on imports from Europe early this year. The ban was imposed on imports from Britain in March 1996. The Health Ministry has been carrying out tests on all cows slaughtered for meat since the first case of the disease was found in Japan. The farm ministry's plan would mark the first time for Japan to unconditionally slaughter cows meant for consumption. Japan has 4.5 million cows, including dairy cows.

The mad cow scare has swept the world's second-largest economy, slashing beef sales by more than 50 percent and shaking the farm and food industries. Many meat-eaters in Japan have turned their eyes to alternatives such as pork, chicken and fish. No one has died or fallen sick since Japan's first case was reported. Scientists believe that eating beef infected with BSE can cause a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), a fatal brain affliction. In Europe, vCJD has killed about 100 people.






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