Hokkaido plans to introduce a system to provide farmers with around 1 million yen for each cow infected with mad cow disease in a bid to keep them from secretly disposing of animals suspected of having the disease, officials said Tuesday.
The Hokkaido government plans to submit a 30 million yen supplementary budget to the local assembly this month, they said. The system will be introduced as soon as the budget is passed.
Under the current system to control the disease, once a cow is found to have mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, many cows at the same farm are disposed of because they are considered to be "quasi-infected."
To determine the route of the infection, the Hokkaido government determined that incentives are needed to persuade farmers to ship cows suspected of having the disease to market, where they can be tested, they said.