A health ministry panel on Friday recommended a ban on the use of cattle backbones in food products, as a safeguard against the human variant of mad cow disease.
The ban will apply to the backbones of cattle reared in Japan and in other nations that have suffered cases of mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
The manufacture and sale of extracts or oil derived from cow backbones, as well as processed foods containing such extracts or oil, will be banned, members of the special BSE panel said.