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Ten countries ban U.S. beef after mad-cow scare
Tokyo ? Fears about a suspected U.S. case of mad
cow disease spread
quickly abroad Wednesday, with 10 countries
blocking the import of
American beef after a cow in Washington state
tested positive for the
illness.
Japan, the world’s top importer of U.S. beef in
terms of value, imposed an
indefinite ban and planned to recall certain meat
products already on the
market, while South Korea halted customs
inspections of American beef and
suspended sales for meat already on supermarket
shelves.
Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Australia, Taiwan,
Singapore, Thailand and
Malaysia also banned the imports, as did the
Chinese territory of Hong
Kong.
Mexico, which imports the largest quantity of
American beef ? 384,900 tons
? also banned the import of live cattle from the
United States. The United
States shipped 106,000 head of cattle to Mexico
last year.
“This is a precautionary measure, in which Mexico
is saying ’stop
everything’ and we’ll study the situation,” said
Javier Trujillo, director
of safety and inspection for the Agriculture
Department.
“We’re even going to send inspectors to
Washington state and once we know
the exact dimensions, we will decide if we
maintain it.”
In Brussels, Belgium, the European Union, which
already bans much U.S.
beef because of fears about growth hormones, said
it would not take any
additional measures.
Antonia Mochan, a spokeswoman at the EU’s
executive Commission, said the
United States already was classified as an
“at-risk country” as part of
the sweeping EU measures adopted following
Britain’s mad cow crisis, which
began in the late 1980s and spread across western
Europe. Under those
restrictions, imports of specific risk products,
such as brains, are
banned.
The moves came after the U.S. government
announced that a Holstein cow on
a Washington state farm tested positive for mad
cow disease, marking the
disease’s first suspected appearance in the
United States.
British experts said the United States must seek
out the help of countries
that have experience dealing with the disease and
must take swift action
to restore consumer confidence in its beef
stocks.
“The key here is to restore confidence quickly,
not to allow it to drag
out,” Sean Ricard, former chief economist of
Britain’s National Farmers’
Union, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
“What I hope America will do
is take rapid action, perhaps slaughter the herd
that animal came from.”
Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, eats
holes in the brains of cattle. It sprang up in
Britain in 1986 and spread
through Europe and Asia, prompting massive
destruction of herds and
decimating the European beef industry.
People can contract a form of BSE if they eat
infected beef or nerve
tissue, and possibly through blood transfusions.
The human form of mad cow
disease is the fatal brain-wasting variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,
which so far has killed 143 people in Britain and
10 elsewhere, but none
in the United States.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the
risk to human health in
this case was “extremely low.” The parts of the
cow that would be infected
? the brain, the spinal cord and the lower part
of the small intestine ?
were removed before the animal went to a meat
processing plant.
The immediate reaction also reflected the
widespread consumption of U.S.
beef in Asia, where American eating habits have
gained tremendous
popularity in recent decades, as evidenced by the
proliferation of
fast-food outlets.
In Canada, where a single case of the disease was
found in May, federal
officials said late Tuesday that imports would
not be banned unless the
suspected case was confirmed.
