Stockbreeders join together in demanding government pay for BSE-related losses

Stockbreeders are launching a movement to write "bills" to the government for losses they suffered from mad cow disease, bovine spongeform encephalopathy (BSE).

The National Federation of Farmers Movement (Nominren) has called on livestock farmers throughout the country to join together in the campaign in order to prevent the nation's livestock farming from being further damaged.

When a Nominren Ibaraki Prefectural organization member visited a stockbreeder and asked him to estimate his losses, he discovered how great his losses really were. He said, "Livestock farmers tend to think and act alone, and now Nominren is doing a good job organizing a movement among livestock farmers."

A stockbreeder in the same prefecture has lost about 14 million yen because he only got 120,000 or 130,000 yen per head of cattle during the three months after the BSE outbreak last year even though he had spent at least 450,000 yen per head to raise them.

The government is responsible for the BSE outbreak because it ignored WHO recommendations and experts' opinions calling for a ban on meat-and-bone meal (MBM), and yet it ignores the victims.

Nominren plans to hand the "bills" to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and prefectural governments and push them into settling the matter. (end)