Japanese Vet Found Dead After Mad Cow Failure

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, May 14, 2002

Japanese Vet Found Dead After Mad Cow Failure

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A Japanese veterinarian who failed to diagnose mad cow disease in a sick dairy cow has apparently committed suicide, health officials said on Tuesday, a day after Japan confirmed its fourth case of the illness in cattle.

The news came as the Health Ministry moved to step up mad-cow testing to try to ease concerns over the latest outbreak, which has reignited a health scare that devastated Japan's food sector last year.

The 29-year-old veterinarian, an employee of a public health center near the site of the latest outbreak on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, was found dead at her home on Monday, officials at the center said.

Police are investigating, media reports said.

The veterinarian had left a note apologizing for failing to detect the disease in the six-year-old Holstein cow after it was brought into the center for examination, the officials said.

Japan's latest case of mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), comes just in time to tarnish its image weeks before thousands of visitors arrive for soccer's World Cup finals, being co-hosted with South Korea.

South Korea is grappling with a health scare of its own, slaughtering tens of thousands of animals to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which can kill cloven-hoofed livestock such as pigs and cows but is harmless to humans.

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