Japan Says Death Linked to Mad Cow

Japan on Friday confirmed its first human fatality linked to mad cow disease after the December death of a man in his 40s.

Health officials said the man had developed the brain-wasting illness in 2001 and may have contracted it while living in Britain in 1989, when that nation suffered an outbreak of mad cow.

Scientists believe there is strong evidence that eating products contaminated with the agent that causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, can cause a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but the link has not been definitively established.

Investigators here ruled out other potential causes, including a blood transfusion from someone with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, leading them to conclude that the man had contracted the disease after eating infected food.

Analysts said the discovery could hamper efforts to resume imports of American beef, once worth about $1.7 billion a year.

Once the largest importer of U.S. beef, Japan banned beef products from the United States after a cow in Washington state was determined to have had the disease in 2003.