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No mad cow disease in China
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CHINA has not detected a single case of mad cow disease and considers the risk it will spread across its borders very slim, State media said yesterday.
The Ministry of Agriculture came to the conclusion after a year-long analysis, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing Jia Youling, director of the ministry's bureau of animal production and health.
“It is almost impossible that the ailment will find its way into China through imported cows and use of meat and bone meal," Jia told Xinhua.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a deadly brain-wasting illness in humans.
The disorder killed at least 80 people, mostly in Britain, during the 1990s.
China responded to the outbreak in 1990 by banning imports of European cattle and most cattle products, Xinhua said.
According to the Xinhua report, the risk of mad cow epidemic in China is minimal because of the restrictive policies adopted by the government.
Of the 12,639 tonnes of foreign-produced meat and bone meal that China imported in the period from 1992 to 1999, less than three tonnes were from European countries such as Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark, the report said.
There is also litte likelihood the disease could have been introduced through the 2,863 breeding cattle China imported from Japan, Canada, the United States and Australia in the same period, it said.
These animals, which underwent strict quarantine and were isolated for long-term observation when imported, have not been found to have any symptoms of the disease, Jia said.(SD-Agencies)
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