A US delegation, which is in Japan this week to convince the
country to open the gates to US beef imports, may have its plans
scuppered as the Japanese farm ministry says it is very wary of
more BSE cases in the US.
In a bid to win back slashed beef sales, the FDA's head honcho will
travel to Japan today to discuss recent events linked to the first
case of mad cow disease in the US.
As the United States deals with the fallout from the first case of
mad cow disease to hit the country, an international organisation
warns countries to stay on the alert and buck up controls.
New research virtually eliminates the likelihood of mad cow disease
being transmitted from one generation of cattle to the next, a
senior British government adviser on the disease has reported.
A day after Italy's first human case of suspected mad cow disease,
the European Parliament has demanded new EU powers to help prevent
the consumption of contaminated meat, reported Reuters.
Slovakia's fifth case of mad cow disease surfaced on Friday, three
months after the country became the second central European state
to discover the brain-wasting affliction, a state veterinarian
said.
A European Union ban on meat-based livestock feed, imposed over
fears of mad cow disease, could in future be relaxed for certain
types of animals, E.U. officials said on Monday.
Japan's Health Ministry said on Tuesday that it planned to inspect
all cattle due to be processed into food, tightening up its checks
for mad cow disease which currently only cover cows aged 30 months
or more.
Tests from a German laboratory confirmed Slovakia's first case of
mad cow disease on Thursday, proving fears that the brain wasting
affliction has spread further into Eastern Europe.
The Japanese government is to temporarily place a total ban on the
distribution of imported and domestically produced meat and bone
meal (MBM), an animal feed suspected of causing mad cow disease,
government sources said yesterday.
The Japanese government made a huge blunder in ignoring a European
Union report warning of a mad cow disease outbreak in Japan, the
Japanese Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries minister admitted.
U.K. research published on Thursday said that an entrenched sheep
disease, scrapie, could have triggered mad cow disease, whose human
form has killed more than 100 people, primarily in Britain.
An international conference on mad cow disease on Thursday urged
all countries to take preemptive measures to combat the fatal,
brain-wasting illness,...
Central and east European agriculture ministers agreed at a meeting
on Thursday to harmonise efforts to keep their countries free of
mad cow disease....
