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Wednesday May 7, 11:07 AM
U.S. Beef Safe, Poses Negligible Health Risk: Officials$all $sk $us $rur $fod $tda $liv $dru SEOUL, May 7 Asia Pulse - U.S. beef is safe and poses no risks for South Koreans, health experts and officials said on Tuesday as they sought to calm public fears over mad cow disease transmitted by U.S. beef imports, scheduled to resume in mid-May.
CJD, commonly called mad cow disease, is characterized by holes forming in the brain and a 100 percent fatality rate. Worldwide, 207 people have died from the disease. "Seoul has confidence that the United States has the capability to detect sick animals and can remove all parts in the butchering process that can pose heath risks," said Assistant Agriculture Minister Min Dong-seok. The chief negotiators in the talks said that the view is supported by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), which gave the U.S. "controlled risk" status in terms of mad cow disease management. The OIE classification technically allows the U.S. to export most beef cuts without restrictions. Private experts and others from the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said that since countries around the world have started imposing enhanced protein feed measures, there has been a dramatic reduction of cases among both humans and cows. "From a peak of 37,316 cases reported worldwide in 1992, the numbers have been drastically cut to 141 cases in 2007 and 20 in the whole of this year," they said. Experts added that only three people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with the disease. KCDC added that there is a need to distinguish between specified risk materials (SRMs) and humans catching vCJD. "SRMs are removed in the butchering process as a precaution, but not because they all have the Prion protein that can be transmitted to humans," said Wie Sung-hwan, a KCDC expert. Tests have shown that 99.9 percent of all Prion protein, which has been linked to mad cow disease, is located in SRMs. However, the brains and intestines of normal cows do not necessarily carry it. Others like Kim Yun-joong, a professor of neurology at the Ilsong Institute of Life Science Hallym University, contested media reports that hinted that South Koreans are more genetically vulnerable to vCJD. "The genetic makeup of a person may influence the contraction of a disease, although this is not an absolute factor," the scientist said. Citing other media reports, he said that since South Koreans, Japanese and Chinese all share the same genetic makeup, it makes no sense that out of the more than 200 people who have come down with vCJD, only one was Asian. Kim, one of the country's foremost experts in the fatal disease, said that people need to approach the risk in terms of context, noting that while over 180,000 British cattle have caught the disease, only 166 people in Britain were diagnosed with the disease. In Germany, no one has died from vCJD, although there were 400 cattle infected with the disease, he said. Government negotiators, meanwhile, said that while there could be minor adjustments to the import sanitation agreement signed on April 18, there will be no renegotiation. However, they said that if there is new scientific research to uproot existing views, or if the U.S. loses its controlled risk status set by the OIE, new negotiations can be held. Under the agreement that will come into force in mid-May, South Korea agreed to open its market to most beef cuts, with the exception of certain SRMs. The pact replaces an earlier deal reached in January 2006 that limits U.S. beef imports to boneless beef from cattle under 30 months old. (Yonhap)
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