U.S. and Japan to Review Beef Cattle Test Methods for prevention of BSE in cattles
U.S. and Japan to Review Beef Cattle Test Methods for prevention of BSE in cattles
Dec. 17 – Japanese and U.S. agriculture officials are in talks in Tokyo to review ways to confirm the age of beef cattle apart from tests for mad cow disease before a partial resumption of beef trade.
The talks follow Japanese missions to the U.S. and Canada from Nov. 29 and Dec. 3. Results of the meetings, closed to the public and the media, will be released on Dec. 20, Tatsumi Okura, a food safety official at the Agriculture Ministry in Tokyo, said.
“We are simply exchanging our views on mad cow safeguards with U.S. officials and age verification methods,'’ Okura said. Japanese and U.S. officials agreed in October to review policies by year end on testing beef cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, and on ways to confirm the age of cattle, Okura said.
Japan’s ban on U.S. beef followed discovery of a case of mad cow in Washington state. Japan bought $1.7 billion of U.S. beef in 2003 before the ban.
BSE has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a brain-wasting illness blamed for at least 139 deaths in the U.K.
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