On Sept. 22, the Japanese government announced what had been suspected for more than a month: that a dairy cow raised in Chiba Prefecture had indeed been infected with a brain-wasting disease.
One hundred days have passed since the agriculture ministry made the announcement at a predawn morning news conference, but the nation remains gripped by mad cow disease as experts struggle to determine the extent of the infection and to find out why the disease has struck Japan, the first nation outside Europe to become infected.
The public is still wary of eating beef, and finger-pointing continues as the opposition camp seeks to pinpoint the government's responsibility for bringing financial ruins to the nation's cattle industry.