The government is drafting plans for the construction of eight state-of-the-art incinerators to burn cow carcasses and parts that may transmit mad cow disease, government sources said Thursday.

The sources said allocations will be included in the fiscal 2002 budget. The facilities are to be fully operational in three to four years.

The move comes a day after the discovery of a second cow in Japan with the brain-wasting illness formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The sources said the new incinerators will incinerate cows that die from disease or injury, as well as cow parts the health ministry has ordered destroyed, such as brains and spinal cords.

While these items, classified as industrial waste, must be disposed of by the producer, authorities have been having difficulties finding facilities willing to burn such parts for a protracted period of time, they said.

The farm and environment ministries are currently discussing whether meat-and-bone meal, which is believed to transmit the disease, can also be burned at the new facilities. At present, the feed is viewed as garbage that local municipalities are obliged to handle.

The sources said the new facilities will be set up in Hokkaido and the Tohoku, Kanto, Tokai, Hokuriku, Chugoku-Shikoku and Kyushu regions.

Although the central government and the prefectures will subsidize about 25 percent of the cost of the incinerators, the private sector -- including livestock industry bodies and waste disposal businesses -- will take the initiative in constructing and operating them, the sources said.

Some 160,000 cows -- 60,000 tons worth -- die at farms annually. While their carcasses had previously been used to produce meat-and-bone meal, the discovery of mad cow disease has led to a ban on distributing the feed, forcing farmers to hire waste-disposal firms to burn the dead cows.

High-powered incinerators are needed to fully incinerate a cow, and only 66 locations nationwide, with total capacity of 15,000 tons, can currently accept such waste.