Preliminary tests on an 8 1/2-year-old Holstein, which was killed at a ranch in Hobetsu, Hokkaido, after it began stumbling and showing signs of arthritis, indicated it had the fatal brain-wasting disease, and more precise tests confirmed those results, the Farm Ministry said.

Eating beef from an infected cow is thought to cause the fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The government has checked every slaughtered cow before it enters the food supply since 2001, after its first discovery of mad cow disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

On Feb. 4, the government confirmed Japan's first human case of mad cow disease following the death of a man. Health authorities have said it was likely he contracted the disease while living for a month in Britain -- where mad cow first surfaced -- in 1989.

The Japan Times Weekly: March 5, 2005
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