New suspected mad cow case found in Japan

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 04, 2003

New suspected mad cow case found in Japan

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A cow suspected of contracting the mad cow disease was found in Japan, which, if confirmed, will be the second case this year and the ninth since 2001 in the country, said the health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

A slaughtered 21-month-old cow in the southern Hiroshima Prefecture has been preliminarily diagnosed with the mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), said the ministry.

The Holstein was born in January 2002 in Hyogo Prefecture and had been raised in Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, it said.

The ministry will set up a task force Tuesday afternoon to make final confirmation.

Japan's beef industry was badly hit after the first case emerged in September 2001. The deadly disease leads to sponge-likebrain and can be transferred to human being if contaminated beef is consumed. But there has been no BSE-linked death report in Japan.

If the fresh case is confirmed, the cow will become the youngest with the disease, breaking the record set last month whena 24-month-old cow was found ill.

The source of these cases has not yet been determined. But the government thinks it was either cows imported from Britain in the 1980s or Italian-made meat and bone meal used as feed and importedbefore 1990.

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