Japan rejected a report by the European Union that warned of a high risk of mad cow disease in Japan, before the discovery of the country's first case, officials of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry has acknowledged.
The ministry released the report for the first time during Friday's meeting of a committee launched by the farm and health ministries to study whether government measures to cope with the disease, called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, have been appropriate.
Some media reports had said that the ministry had shunned the EU's findings, but Friday was the first time the government made details of the report known.