Japan Press Weekly

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2013 April 17 - 23 [AGRICULTURE]

JCP demands blanket testing for BSE

The Japanese Communist Party on April 17 urged the Cabinet Office and the Health Ministry to not relax mad cow test rules any further.

At present, slaughtered cattle aged 30 months old and younger are not required to be tested for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) under the national BSE screening standards. The Prion Expert Committee of the Food Safety Commission on April 3 released an assessment report that allows the central government to exempt under 48 month-old cattle from having the BSE detection test.

The FSC will finalize and submit the report to the Health Ministry after inviting public comments. The ministry plans to implement the revised rule as early as July.

The BSE screening test program for domestically reared cattle started in October 2010 following the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in Japan. At first, all slaughtered cattle had to undergo testing, but the national government excluded cattle under 20 months of age from its test program in August 2005, and cattle under the age of 30 months were excluded later. However, pushed by consumers and farmers calling for food safety, many municipalities have been testing all cattle for mad cow disease.

If cattle under 48 months old are excluded from the test as the FSC report recommends, around 90% of butchered cattle will not be covered by the national testing procedure. This would lead to a drastic decrease in amount of subsidies to local governments for conducting BSE screening, possibly forcing them to give up administering their tests.

JCP candidate for the Upper House election Kira Yoshiko in the meeting with government officials at the Diet members’ Office Building stated, “It is because of blanket testing that people can eat domestic beef without anxiety,” and demanded that the national government cancel the plan to exclude more cattle from the test and resume the procedure of blanket testing.