Eating Disorders

... Japanese Gobble Australian Beef Japanese Gobble Australian Beef Staff and agencies27 March, 2006 By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer 55 minutes ago TOKYO - Like many other Japanese, Kenji Miyoda, savoring one of his favorite lunches — a bowl of rice topped with beef from Australia, raw egg and spicy sauce — feels Australian beef is far safer than American beef.

Australian beef was once viewed as tough and tasteless compared to its U.S.

counterpart, but that stereotype is vanishing on quality upgrades by switching feed to grain, instead of just grass, to cater to the Japanese palate.

The discovery of a cow infected with mad cow disease in the United States in 2003 prompted Japan to ban U.S.

beef.

The reopening of the market in December went immediately awry in January, when veal cuts with backbone were found in a shipment.

Such cuts are eaten in the U.S.

but considered at risk for mad cow disease in Japan.

Central to its appeal is the fact that Australia has never had mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a brain-wasting ailment in cattle.

Australia protects its cow herd religiously, boasting that its borders as an island nation are closed to possible contamination.

In people, eating meat products contaminated with BSE is linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain, from a deadly human nerve disorder, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Raising grain-fed cows — something American...

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