060131 Japan Says Comment on Beef Risk Not Helpful

Japan said comments by a U.S. Agriculture official comparing the health risks of eating beef to being hit by a car aren't helpful in talks to reopen Japan's market to U.S. cattle products.

``Walking into the store to buy beef has a higher probability that you will be hit by an automobile than it does from the harm coming to you by eating beef,'' U.S. Agriculture Department Undersecretary J.B. Penn said at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo yesterday.

``I'd ask that there be no light-hearted comments like that,'' Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Spokesman Jinen Nagase said at a press conference in Tokyo today. ``We are taking this problem very seriously and hope they are as well.''

Japan halted imports of U.S. beef on Jan. 20, just weeks after lifting a two-year embargo imposed after mad cow disease was found in the U.S. The ban was reimposed when banned spinal material was found in three boxes of a shipment of veal, violating an agreement the U.S. would ship beef from cattle no older than 20 months and that spinal cords, brains and other parts blamed for spreading the human variant of mad-cow disease would be removed.

Penn is leading a three-person delegation to Japan to apologize for the oversight and show how the U.S. is improving its monitoring system. Penn said yesterday the U.S. recognizes it must prove to Japanese consumers its beef is safe to eat before Japan accepts any timetable for reopening its market and that it was ``a little premature to talk of timetables.''

More than 60 nations banned U.S. beef after a case of mad-cow disease was found in Washington State in 2003, wiping out $3.8 billion in annual exports, half of which went to Japan.

Mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a brain-wasting livestock illness that scientists say is spread in cattle by tainted feed. Eating contaminated meat from infected animals can cause a fatal human variant of the disease, which has been blamed for the deaths of 152 people in the U.K.

Japan's agriculture ministry confirmed on Jan. 23 the country's 22nd case of BSE, after tests were conducted on a 64- month-old cow on the northern island of Hokkaido.

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