Japan considers relaxing mad cow rules

Japan could make young American cattle exempt from its requirement that all imported livestock be tested for mad cow disease before shipping, under a new proposal today that might lead to an easing of Tokyo’s total ban on US beef.

Tokyo’s insistence on blanket testing has been a major sticking point in talks with Washington aimed at ending the ban, imposed last December after the first case of mad cow in the United States.

Washington has refused blanket testing, saying it would be costly and ineffective.

The agriculture and health ministries today submitted a joint proposal to the state-appointed Food Safety Commission to exempt cows 20 months or younger from testing, including domestic cattle, said health ministry official Yutaka Konishi.

The commission, comprised of scientists and other experts, previously backed such a revision and was expected to endorse the proposal.

Agriculture Minister Yoshinobu Shimamura today voiced support for the revision.

“Cows 20 months and younger pose absolutely no problem. That has clearly been shown statistically,” Shimamura said.

Authorities say infections among young animals are extremely rare and that testing methods for them are not reliable.

Cows under 20 months are unlikely to have been exposed to meat-and-bone meal made from ruminant animal parts. The meal was believed to have been a major cause in previous outbreaks, and has been banned by most countries.

Japan, the most lucrative overseas market for US beef before the ban, has said it wanted to resolve the dispute, but had previously maintained its blanket-testing requirement was necessary for food safety.

Yesterday, Japan confirmed its 14th case of mad cow – the second case to crop up in less than a month. Both animals were older than 20 months.

Tokyo has checked every slaughtered cow before it entered the food supply since 2001 after its first discovery of mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

Japan bought $1.2bn (€1.7bn) of US beef in 2003, more than any other country, before it halted imports.

Eating beef from a diseased cow is thought to cause the fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.