Agence France Presse | May 21, 2003
Japan Wednesday banned beef imports from Canada, after the Canadian farm minister confirmed the first case of mad cow disease in a domestically raised animal.
"To ensure BSE does not enter our nation, we have issued an emergency import ban... for cows, goats and sheeps as well as products that are made from their meat, organs and other items," the Japanse farm ministry said in a statement. Japan imported 19,052 tonnes of beef from Canada in 2002, accounting for roughly 3.9 percent of 486,740 tonnes of all beef imports to Japan, according to finance ministry data.
Goats and sheep can also develop a disease similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
Japan already has confirmed seven domestic cases of BSE, becoming the only Asian nation affected by the brain-wasting disease, which triggered a health scare that has decimated beef consumption and exports.
Canada on Tuesday confirmed a case of mad cow disease in its top beef-producing province of Alberta. In 1993, again in Alberta, there was one case of mad cow disease, but it stemmed from a cow that came from Britain.
BSE is a brain-wasting illness linked to the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans.Agence France Presse:
