- SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea
banned livestock product imports from Japan on Sunday after Japan's farm
ministry said tests had confirmed it had Asia's first case of mad cow
disease.
-
- Seoul had withheld quarantine on livestock products from
the island nation since the discovery of a suspected case of mad cow
disease
in the Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo on September 10.
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- "We have changed the steps to an import ban from
a temporary suspension after the Japanese government officially confirmed
the disease," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
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- Some 349 tonnes of cattle bones and feet from Japan which
are in store at the quarantine office will be sent back or disposed of,
it said.
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- South Korea has brought in only two tonnes of beef and
some 260 tonnes of cattle foot bones from Japan since April. Imports of
livestock products from Japan were banned up to April after foot and mouth
disease broke out in the country early last year.
-
- The ministry said South Korea had never imported Japanese
meat-and-bone meal (MBM) of ruminant animals which is used for
feeds.
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- The Japanese case, discovered in a dairy cow, was the
first case in Asia of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), which is believed to be transmitted through infected MBM fed to
cattle.
-
- BSE has been linked to the brain-wasting variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease (vCJD) in humans, which has killed over 100 people, mainly in
Britain.
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- To prohibit the disease from entering Korea, the
government
will keep its ban on livestock imports from Japan and 30 European
countries,
including Britain.
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