The key messages in Thursday's report by the Food Safety Commission's prion committee have been misinterpreted by the media and the government, and the panel itself was used to serve political ends, the panel's deputy chairman declared Thursday.
In an interview with The Japan Times, Kiyotoshi Kaneko described his time on the panel assessing the risk of mad cow disease in North American beef as being "filled with a sense of helplessness."
Kaneko, professor and chairman of Tokyo Medical University's second department of physiology, helped draft the report that was finalized Thursday. The report states that the difference in mad cow disease risks posed by North American and Japanese beef is minimal, given certain conditions.