By Kim Tae-gyu

Korea plans to send an investigation team to the United States as early as this Sunday to check the U.S. facilities involving a dairy cow, which was earlier this week confirmed to be suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad-cow disease.

Meanwhile, the country’s farm minister said that it will not stop imports or quarantine of U.S. beef products despite the BSE case in California for the first time in six years there.

“The U.S. replied to our questions on the cow at issue, which showed that it was 10 years and seven months old when it came down with less risky atypical BSE,” an official at the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MIFAFF) said.

“In order to relieve citizen’s concerns we plan to dispatch our experts to the U.S. this Sunday at the earliest. We are currently in talks with the U.S. government.”

The Korean team hopes to visit the California farm where the BSE-affected cow was raised and a rendering facility where it was euthanized as well as the state-run lab in which the animal’s carcass is located.

“The U.S. seems to be reluctant to open the California farm and the lab since they are continuing research on their own,” the official said. “We will keep negotiating with them.”

Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Suh Kyu-yong said that the nation would not halt the imports or quarantine of the U.S. beef but promised to take more measures to secure the safety of the products by inspecting more than 50 percent of the beef.

Previously, the proportion was 3 percent and the MIFAFF jacked up the figure to 30 percent this week in the aftermath of the outbreak.

“After checking the answers of Washington, we concluded that we do not have to put an end to quarantines,” Suh said reporters.

His remarks were taken to mean that because the cow in question was almost 11 years old, it would not have been exported to Korea, which only accepts U.S. beef from cattle younger than 30 months.

In addition, atypical BSE is believed to be less risky.

Typical BSE is known to be caused by feed, which means that a group of cows can be affected by the brain disorder at the same time. In contrast, atypical BSE is more about mutation that takes place in old cows.

“In Europe, cows older than five years sometimes suffer from BSE due to their age. In this case, the states do not take specific steps,” Suh said.

BSE is a lethal disease in cattle that can trigger human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), a fatal human brain disorder. vCJD was first detected in 1995 in the United Kingdom and has claimed many lives worldwide. Korean people worry about contracting vCJD.

The imports of U.S. beef products were prohibited by the Seoul administration in the early and mid 2000s after a BSE case was reported there. Korea resumed imports of U.S. beef in 2008 to obtain U.S. congressional approval for a free trade agreement.