12th case of mad cow confirmed in Japan
Japan Times : 12th case of mad cow confirmed
Quote:
Japan has confirmed its 12th case of mad cow disease, an official said Monday.
It is the third case of the brain-wasting illness this year.
The 5-year-old dairy cow tested positive for the disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, on Friday at a slaughterhouse in Shisui, Kumamoto Prefecture, prefectural spokesman Toshinori Takano said.
The animal's meat and organs had not been released on the market, and its carcass will be incinerated, he said.
Japan's first case of mad cow disease, in September 2001, was the first case outside of Europe, where the disease devastated cattle farms.
...
Japan finds it difficult to accept a U.S. demand for excluding cattle aged 24 months or younger from testing for mad cow disease, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Monday.
The U.S. demand is less stringent than a recommendation made by Japan's Food Safety Commission that calls on the government to end the current blanket testing and exempt beef cattle aged 20 months or younger.
The top government spokesman told a news conference that Japan should take into account that the brain-wasting disease was detected in cows aged 21 months and 23 months in Japan.
I saw a TV programme on NHK that explained that cows infected by BSE cannot be detected by tests during the virus' incubation period. That period is from about 2 to 6 years for cows (for humans 5 to 20 years, I think). As a result, all young cows or calves tested cannot be diagnosed as having BSE, making all claim of safety derisory.
This cow was 5 years old, which explains the virus could be found. But the majority of the beef we eat is from younger cows. As soon as the calves turns adult (6 months, 1 year ?), they are put down to eat. Older cows are usually those kept for milk, and once they get too old to be productive, they also end up in our plates.
But not being able to detect the disease does not mean it isn't there and can't be transmitted to humans. BSE is the bovine form of the virus known as Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease for humans. The virus is slightly different but can change inside the body of somebody eating contaminated beef, in the same way as Africans eating apes first got HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which mutated from the chimpanzee's virus, known as SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus).
Although the chances of the BSE virus mutating to the human form are low (maybe 1%), there is always a risk. The more beef products we consume (especially offals) and the higher the risk of transmission.
I also presume that any country having BSE cases, especially in such various locations as was the case in Japan (Hokkaido, Chiba, Kyushu...), have very high probabilities of widespread contamination. This is because BSE originates from animal flours given to the cows as food, and they are usually the same nationwide (maybe not in all farms, but in about every regions). As it is extremely difficult to detect BSE during the incumbation period, even with blood tests and the highest technologies (the same way as HIV doesn't show up in bloodtests for the first 6 months after contamination),
I seriously oubt the validity of the tests themselves, and wouldn't trust any (financially motivated) government on this. It is very possible that governments worldwide are trying to protect their cattle owners by lying to the public about the real danger of BSE. Or people with the real authority just can't understand what scientists tell them, or like in Japan, people just don't want to stop eating beef, even if they know there is a high risk of dying from it in 10 or 20 years from now.
