000374 Asia Facing Bad Beef Scare

Tokyo - Dozens of cattle have been slaughtered, barns have been toppled and burned and bans have been placed on meat imports.

It's reminiscent of the scare in Europe over mad cow disease, but in Asia the new fears stem from an older and better-known cattle contagion - hoof-and- mouth disease.

The trouble started last week, when cows on seven farms 30 miles northeast of Seoul developed fever and blisters in the mouth, the telltale symptoms of the disease.

Since then, farmers have killed off herds suspected of the highly contagious infection, and importers were quickly slapping restrictions on foreign food.

South Korea, the hardest hit country, announced that it will slaughter 350,000 head of cattle within a 12-mile radius of Paju, the focus of the outbreak.

So far, 105 head of cattle there have been slaughtered, the movement of all cattle and pigs in the area has been prohibited and barns housing the diseased animals were burned.

“We are taking strong quarantine measures,” said South Korean Deputy Agriculture and Forestry Kim Dong-keun. “The government wants to tell the people that it's safe to consume the meat ... now on the market.”

Seoul had earlier said it has successfully contained the spread of the disease.

Meanwhile, 13 head of cattle on two farms in southern Japan were slaughtered after some of them showed symptoms. Officials have not confirmed whether hoof- and-mouth is the culprit, however.

The response by importers was swift. Japan and South Korea quickly banned imports of each other's beef, followed by similar restrictions in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.

Unlike mad cow disease, which is believed to cause a brain-wasting ailment in humans, hoof-and-mouth disease cannot be passed on to consumers. A mad cow disease outbreak in Britain in recent years led to a global ban on exports of British beef, largely over fears that a variation of the disease could be transmitted to humans.

But hoof-and-mouth can ruin beef and milk cow herds. The virus causes fever and blisters on the feet and mouths, sapping the animals' appetite and causing weight loss and possibly death.

The disease is a major concern for big meat producers like Australia, which sold $788 million in beef to Japan last year.

“The Australian authorities must take action to ensure that Australian agriculture is not at risk,” Australian Agriculture Minister Warren Truss said.

In an effort to reassure the public, Kim and other top Korean government officials held a public meat-tasting event.

“We will declare that the region is clean within the next six months,” Kim said.

The slaughtering will continue for two months, and the government will launch a massive fumigation and cleanup operation in the region, he said.

The whole project will cost $90 million, Kim said.

The last outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease in Asia occurred in Taiwan in 1997, when ranchers were forced to destroy 3.6 million pigs, or more than 80% of the nation's hog population.

It isn't clear when Taiwan will be able to resume exporting pork, because it takes up to 10 years to get rid of the disease. Japan's last case of hoof-and- mouth disease was in 1908.

The bans will likely have little effect on either consuming or exporting countries because Japan's and South Korea's beef exports are small. Japan, for example, exported just 300 tons of beef in 1999, a fraction of the 1.05 million tons that United States shipped overseas during the year.

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