Well, the first mad cow disease case has been reported in the U.S., and Japan, within hours, slammed the doors and immediately instituted an effective ban of U.S. beef imports–not a small deal as Japan is America’s biggest importer “by value”–meaning that expensive beef products are more often imported. Most of that is likely for restaurants, because U.S. beef is for darned sure not prominently featured in Japanese supermarkets.

The supermarkets I have shopped at over the years feature Japanese beef, with Aussie beef coming in second. American beef, when it shows up, is usually a lower-grade and therefore no threat to domestic beef. This echoes the rice market, which, when forced to import rice several years ago due to a poor domestic crop, made certain that almost every bag of cheap, high-quality American rice sold in the country was mixed with a low-quality Thai rice (with some Thai commentators reporting that it was animal-feed quality), a long-grained version very much disliked in Japan–needless to say, Japanese consumers didn’t like it.

The closure of such imports is likely to last for a while, and may very well be as much motivated by protectionism as by health; a single case of mad cow disease was found in Canada in May, and though the U.S. has started lifting imports, Japan is keeping its market shut tight–even to the point of threatening reprisals against countries who do not provide guarantees that Canadian beef isn’t coming through them.

The problem with Japan’s attitude is that it is hardly one to throw stones: Japan has had nine cases of the disease in a bit more than two years, and not all at once, and has handled its own house very sloppily. The first case was on September 10, 2001 (the day before the 9/11 attacks). The most recent cases have been in the past few months. Furthermore, Japan’s handling of the disease outbreak has been dismal. European experts hired by the Japanese government in 1998 warned Japan that its beef industry regulations were insufficient before the first case was reported; the government not only ignored the warning, but it also quashed the publication of the warning.

When the first outbreak did occur, not only did the Japanese government fail to adequately warn people about the dangers, not only did they refuse to ban MBM (meat and bone meal) feed that is a likely cause of the disease until fully a month later, but–get this–they actually allowed the diseased cow to be sent to a plant to be converted into MBM!

When I heard that, I decided I would not eat any more domestic beef in Japan–a decision well-founded, it seems, from Japan’s unsurprisingly consistently botched handling and continuing outbreaks of the disease. Since U.S. beef in supermarkets is rare and not very good, I usually get Aussie stuff (McDonald’s in Japan also uses Aussie beef).

So it is a bit much for Japan to be so drastic with other countries when a single case is reported–especially since the U.S. has not used MBM produced from cow offal in feeding cattle for some time. I would expect the ban to be continued for quite some time, no matter what the determination in the case.