1 mil. cows in Japan to be tested for mad cow disease.

TOKYO, Sept. 19 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to adopt methods used in Europe to test about 1 million cows in Japan for mad cow disease, ministry officials said Wednesday.

A ministry panel decided to expand the scope of existing mad cow testing following the discovery of a suspected infection of a Holstein dairy cow at a farm in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo earlier this month, they said.

The tests, to take place at 117 hygiene inspection centers across the country from next month, will be conducted on all cows aged 30 months or over that are to be processed into meat for human consumption.

Testing will begin once inspectors are fully trained in the new methods. The ministry plans to examine 500,000 cows by March next year.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry also said Wednesday it will ask beef producers not to ship cows that are 30 months old or older to slaughterhouses until the health ministry completes preparations for new inspection system.

The health ministry will adopt the inspection measures used by the European Union, which has recently dealt with several outbreaks of the disease. The total cost of the inspections will be about 3 billion yen, they said.

Since May, the health ministry has conducted intensive examinations of cows aged 2 years or more that have developed symptoms of the disease, such as inability to stand. It will also continue performing checkups on cows aged 24 months to 30 months, they said.

Some 1.3 million cows are processed into meat annually in Japan. Of them, about 1 million are 30 months old or over, according to the ministry.

Following the ban on shipments of cows aged 30 months or over, consumption of beef produced in Japan may fall. The farm ministry said it will extend loans to beef producers as emergency aid.

Workers at the hygiene centers will also be dispatched to farms from which cows are scheduled to be shipped for inspections, the farm ministry said.

The health ministry's Inspection and Safety Division said it considers conducting the costly tests on 1 million cows a necessary measure to ensure the safety of beef.

The new methods will also reduce the time required for inspections, the officials said.

Currently, the ministry sends cows exhibiting irregularities to Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine in Hokkaido, where a 48-hour inspection is conducted. However, the new testing methods should reduce the time required to four to six hours.

Cows that test positive at the hygiene centers will be sent to the Obihiro university or the National Institute of Infectious Diseases to confirm the results. A study panel of the health ministry will make a final decision on their infection, health ministry officials said.

Meanwhile, the farm ministry decided Wednesday to change its surveillance guidelines to allow the killing and burning of any cow that shows even a minimal neurotic symptom such as a physical disorder, ministry officials said.

The decision was made over the processing of the suspected cow at the Chiba farm into meat and bone meal (MBM), a protein feed made from the crushed internal organs, skin and bones of cows, before results of tests on its brain system had been confirmed.

Under the existing guidelines, a cow is killed and burned only after its infection with mad cow disease cannot not be denied.

Mad cow disease was first confirmed in Britain in 1986. It is thought to cause the fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.