Counter-BSE bill passed by Lower House

The Lower House plenary session on June 4 unanimously approved an opposition-sponsored bill on measures to deal with BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and sent it to the Upper House.

The bill, if enacted, will mandate BSE testing for all cows in slaughter houses before and after slaugher.

Since the bill was submitted to the Diet in February, the four opposition parties including the Japanese Communist Party, have collected one-million signatures and held rallies in support of the bill together with consumers and cattle ranchers.

The government and the ruling parties at first were reluctant get a new BSE law enacted.

JCP Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi said that the passage of the bill through the Lower House is the result of joint efforts of the opposition parties and extra-parliamentary grassroots movements.

All four BSE-infected cows in Japan were born in 1996 when the WHO (World Health Organization) called for a ban on the use of MBM (meat-and-born) feed. If the government had accepted this warning at the time, cow infection with BSE could have been avoided. BSE-related losses among producers, distributors, and retailers run up to 400 billion yen (about 3.2 billion dollars).

JCP Ichida said that the government is responsible for this grave failure, and the task now is to win state compensation for the damage by strengthening the grassroots movement. (end)