Animal Health

March 2002

A government panel investigating mad cow disease in Japan has compiled a report that calls on the government to create a new agency to oversee food safety. The proposed Food Safety Agency would take over food safety operations from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. It was proposed because of the lack of coordination between the two ministries in dealing with mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The report blasts the way government handled the outbreak of the deadly brain-wasting disease and harshly criticizing it for ignoring the European Union's warnings about the likelihood of an outbreak in Japan. The report condemns the lack of a sense of crisis and a system of crisis management, as well as a producers first policy that did not take national health into consideration. It complains that the policy-making process for dealing with food safety is vague, evidenced by the ministries' inability to coordinate and deal effectively with the crisis. The panel also proposed the drafting of a new law. The legislation would be written based on a sweeping review of existing food laws, according to the report. The study panel, set up by the two ministries, will put the final touches on the report. Despite mounting calls in the mid-1990s for a ban on meat-and-bone meal, the suspected transmitter of the disease, the farm ministry asked farmers in April 1996 to refrain from feeding the meal to cows. (March 12, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, March 14 the Japan Times)