The Ministry of Health and the State General Administration of Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine jointly issued a statement on Tuesday to ban the import and sale of cosmetics containing cattle or sheep brain tissues, nerve tissue, internal organs, placenta or blood or their extracts from dozens of countries and regions where BSE has been found.

The statement reflects China's latest effort to keep "mad cows" out of the country, said an official with the national quality inspection and quarantine watchdog.

Enterprises that have already imported cosmetic products containing any of these components are urged to immediately recall them before April 20 at the latest, said the statement.

At the same time, all the items and their quantities and the names of their producers and agents should be reported to local sanitation departments and exit-entry inspection offices, it said.

Since the first mad cow was detected in Britain in 1985, BSE cases have cropped up in many European countries, such as Ireland, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Denmark, Italy, Spain, the Principality of Liechtenstein, the Slovak Republic, Finland and Austria, in the past several years.

Starting in the 1990s, related departments under the State Council have drafted a series of regulations to help keep the country free of the disease.

For example, on January 1, 2001, China banned the import of cattle and beef products from BSE-affected countries and the import of feed made of ground-up animal carcasses in the European Union.

Any countries and regions that have fresh occurrences of BSE will be automatically added to the list of BSE-infected areas, according to the statement.

In Asia, BSE was also reported in Japan.

(China Daily March 8, 2002)