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Report
No.220903 |
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- Domestic - |
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Prion Expert Committee Approves Relaxing of the Universal Testing of Cattle for BSE On March 28, the Food Safety Commission's Prion Expert Committee of the Cabinet Office gave a nodding to reviewing the blanket testing of all domestic cattle for BSE practiced since October, 2001 and to exempt cattle of ages 20 months and younger from the test. The expert committee will submit its report to the Food Safety Commission on March 31. The commission will submit its report to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries by the end of April after taking public comments. The commission will then go on to examine the methods used in the United States for eliminating specified risk parts such as brain to see the safety of U.S. beef. The Prion Expert Committee, at its meeting on that day, took on a presumption that the degree of meat contamination will range "form negligible to very low" if the BSE test were to be changed from the universal testing presently practiced to testing cattle of 21 months and older, and concluded that any human health impact (or risks) "will register just a very marginal increase". However, there were opinions expressed at the same meeting saying that "any change in the monthly age would be reasonably decided only after the efficacy will have been confirmed of a set of measures (such as the setting up of a system of surveillance on the elimination of specified risk parts and the abolition of pissing) ", and this view was also incorporated in the report of the expert committee. Even if the criteria for testing were to change, all cattle testing will continue in the country. This is so because it was decided in October last year that the national government will render assistance up to the maximum of three years to those prefecture governments which choose to test all cattle on a voluntary basis. |
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