OSAKA -- Fifty-two public elementary schools in Osaka began serving beef in school lunches again Tuesday after keeping it off the menu for around a month in response to the discovery of Japan's first case of mad cow disease.
A girl digs into one of the first beef-based school lunches served in Osaka Prefecture in about a month at Sekime Higashi Elementary School in Joto Ward, Osaka.The discovery last month that a cow in Chiba Prefecture was infected with the degenerative brain disease prompted 321 state-run elementary and junior high schools in Osaka to ban beef from their lunch menu on Oct. 1.
At one first-grade class at Sekime Higashi Elementary School in Joto Ward, Osaka, children sat down to munch on the day's main dish -- beef and vegetables with Korean seasoning over rice, otherwise known as "bibinba."
School Vice Principal Taizo Asai said he was glad to see the children eating the meal happily, adding that he was also relieved that school lunches can now be prepared as they were before the ban.
The government, which began compulsory checking of all beef cattle for mad cow disease on Oct. 18, has declared that domestically produced beef is safe for consumption.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was first confirmed in Britain in 1986. The disease is thought to cause new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal human equivalent of BSE.