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LEAD: Japan confirms 25th cow tested positive for mad cow disease+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, April 19_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING DETAILS) An expert panel of Japan's health ministry confirmed Wednesday that a dairy cow raised in western Japan has tested positive for mad cow disease, making it the 25th case of BSE in Japan, ministry officials said. The carcass of the 5-year and 11-month-old female Holstein, born in Hokkaido in northern Japan and raised on a farm in Nagi, Okayama Prefecture, will be incinerated and not enter the human food chain, they said. The cow was born in April 2000, before the 2001 implementation of a ban on meat-and-bone meal suspected of being a cause of the disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The cow had been suspected of infection in an earlier preliminary blanket test by a meat inspection institution in Okayama Prefecture and tested positive in further testing by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. The expert panel drew the conclusion through e-mail contact among members, rather than by holding a meeting, because data pointed to a typical case of BSE, the officials said. |