Japanese Shun Beef and US Food
Imports After Second Mad Cow
Case Confirmed

The Australian
11/22/01

Japan reels at new mad cow scare
STEPHEN LUNN

* Tokyo correspondent

JAPAN yesterday admitted finding a second case of mad cow disease, a
discovery which threatens to cripple the domestic beef market and to
increase the damage already suffered by beef exporters to Japan,
including Australia.

The Health Ministry last night confirmed a cow on Japan's north island
of Hokkaido had tested positive for the brain-wasting disease bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) during nationwide testing for the
disease, a program introduced after the discovery on September 10 of
Asia's first confirmed BSE case in a cow on a farm near Tokyo.

Japanese beef consumption has plummeted by 70 per cent since then,
despite the now ill-founded government assurance on October 18 that
domestic beef was BSE-free and safe. Scientists have linked the human
consumption of BSE-infected beef to a fatal brain disease known as
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), with about 100 Britons
succumbing to the disease after eating contaminated beef. Japan
believes the disease was brought in through a batch of contaminated
meat and bone meal imported from Europe, and has banned imported feed.

Japan's second BSE find will only exacerbate the concerns of its
fickle consumers, who have already demonstrated a willingness to turn
away not only from domestic beef, but also from beef products imported
from the US and Australia.

A concerted drive from the Australian beef industry to reassure
Japan -- its biggest export market at $1.7 billion last financial
year -- of the safety of its product saw some damage limitation in the
aftermath of the BSE scare.

Sales of Australian beef were down about 25 per cent over the past two
months compared with the US's 80 per cent.

Restaurants, including hamburger chain McDonald's, placed notices in
store windows around Japan advertising their exclusive use of
Australian and New Zealand beef, but burger sales to jittery Japanese
consumers were still well down from before the BSE find.

"Certainly this isn't going to be helpful to beef consumption but, on
the other hand, it does show the screening system is catching the
positives (BSE-infected cows)," Meat and Livestock Australia general
manager of overseas operations, Mike Hayward, said yesterday.

Mr Hayward said it was frustrating that Japanese consumers had so far
failed to distinguish between Australian and domestic beef, but he
said part of the reason was cultural.

"Beef in Japan isn't a staple as it is in Australia, and Japanese will
readily switch to pork or chicken or fish, so to ask them to
distinguish between domestic and imported beef is asking a lot."

The Japanese Government yesterday attempted to reassure the public as
to the safety of domestic beef.

Health Ministry food safety head Shimpei Ozaki said the latest BSE
case showed the stringent tests on slaughtered meat were working and
catching tainted beef before it reached consumers. No one had died or
fallen sick since Japan's first discovery of the disease, he said.

But markets yesterday reflected public scepticism. Beef-related stocks
in meat processing and restaurant companies, which had already
suffered in the aftermath of the first scare, were well down
yesterday, even before the second BSE case had been officially
confirmed.