The governmental Food Safety Commission will meet Thursday to discuss the effectiveness of measures to deal with mad cow disease.
The outcome of the meeting and other related discussions is expected to affect stalled talks between Japan and the United States on Tokyo's import ban on American beef. Experts are still debating whether blanket testing of cattle for the disease is necessary.
Japan began testing all cattle for mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in fall 2001 following the outbreak of the brain-wasting disease in Japan.