Friday 11 January, 2002
The threat of BSE in Asia
Most Asian consumers have probably heard of mad cow disease, or BSE. They will remember it as the brain wasting disease which caused the cull of thousands of cattle in Britain in the 1990s. What they may not know is that Asia has good cause to fear an epidemic of the same proportions. A handful of cases have been discovered in Japan. They're believed to have been caused by contaminated meat and bone meal cattle feed, known as MBM, which was exported to Japan, and elsewhere in Asia, even after it was banned for use in Europe. Our reporter Duncan Bartlett heard more from Kazuya Yamauchi, a virologist formerly of Tokyo University. Click below to hear the interview.
Deborah McKenzie of New Scientist magazine has tracked the BSE crisis since it began in Britain 16 years ago. Christopher Gunness asked her whether the few cases so far documented in Japan were just the tip of the iceberg.
An official inquiry showed that the British government covered up the extent of the BSE crisis. Consumers were urged to buy British beef even after scientists discovered that the disease could pass to humans. About 100 people in Britain have been affected by CJD, the fatal brain affliction caused by eating BSE-infected beef products. Christopher Gunness asked food policy expert Tim Lang what Asian consumers can learn from the painful British experience:
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