Health experts said in a forum yesterday that there was very little risk that U.S. cattle would again contract mad cow disease or that the illness would transmit to humans.
The forum took place amid growing public anxiety about mad cow disease ahead of planned imports of U.S. beef, which were halted due to mad cow fears in 2003.
They said cases of mad cow disease have sharply decreased in recent years as countries have toughened regulations on protein-based cattle feed, which is believed to be the major cause of the illness, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
U.S. beef poses little risk when "specified risk materials" - cattle parts which can be potentially contaminated with BSE agents - are removed from the meat, they said.
The disease is not easily transmitted from cows to humans, they said.
"Only 166 out of 60 million Britons have harbored the human form of BSE (formally known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). It is not easy for humans to develop the disease because of a high species barrier from cows to humans," Cheong Hae-kwan, a medical science professor of Sungkyunkwan University, said.
"Also, only a small number of Britons contracted the disease even though Britons had been exposed to BSE agent for 10 to 15 years before the first case of the human form of BSE was reported," he said.
Shin Dong-chun, a medical science professor of Yonsei University, also said, "While 190,000 cows have contracted BSE worldwide, only 207 humans have been infected with the illness."
"When all SRMs are eliminated, a BSE risk is reduced 100-fold. The danger would drop by the same amount when protein-based cattle feed is restricted," he said.
He said the risk of BSE transmission would be further decreased due to the species barrier.
Professor Lee Yong-soon of Seoul National University also said BSE would soon "disappear" due to enhanced safety measures worldwide. He noted BSE cases decreased from 35,000 in 1993 to 141 in 2007.
"If this trend continues, BSE will come to an end within three to four years or five years at the longest," he said.
Ermias Belay, An official from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also told The Korea Herald, "There are several European countries (e.g. Switzerland, Germany) with a high level of BSE incidence but no vCJD cases, indicating that there must be a substantial species barrier preventing the ease of transmission of BSE to humans."
In the meantime, U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow said yesterday that the risks for U.S. beef have been exaggerated, while the new import rules for U.S. beef are scientifically proven.
By Jin Hyun-joo
Health experts said in a forum yesterday that there was very little risk that U.S. cattle would again contract mad cow disease or that the illness would transmit to humans."If this trend continues, BSE will come to an end within three to four years or five years at the longest," he said.
One of experts said that " Mad cow Disease will be eliminated within three to four years." and "the Mad cow risk is negligible." But I think that these opinions do not include the nation's health. The danger of Mad Cow disease still exsist, because those are just expectation.
I'm sorry, I'm late. Because the article didn't be resisted.
20200041 hyuck sung kwon
