China will continue to ban imports of cow, beef and related products from the United States following confirmation of the country's first homegrown case of mad cow disease, a spokesman with the Ministry of Agriculture said on Friday.

Jia Youling, the spokesman, said the ministry will adopt strict measures to prevent the occurence of the disease in China.

The procedure for approving imports of animals and their related products as well as quarantine on them will be further strengthened, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, management over the production and use of cattle feed will be more strict and cow parts in cattle feed is strictly forbidden, Jia said.

So far, Chinese experts have conducted tests over brains of 10,000 head of cows and all the samples tested are negative, he noted.

The spokesman said in December 2003, the Ministry of Agriculture and relevant departments banned the imports of US animals and related products to prevent the spread of mad cow disease to China.

In September 2004, the ministry abrogated the ban on imports of cow sperms and embryos from the United States and other countries that have been plagued by mad cow disease in accordance with regulations of the World Organization for Animal Health.

On Wednesday, US agriculture officials announced that the test on the confirmed case of mad cow disease in the United States had been traced to a 12-year-old beef cow,  that was born and raised at a Texas ranch

It was the first time the disease has been confirmed in a US-born cow. The other US case was in a dairy cow imported from Canada.

People eating animal meat products contaminated with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), can develop a human variant of the fatal brain-wasting illness called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The brain disorder has killed more than 150 people, mostly in Britain, where an outbreak was reported in the 1990s.

(Xinhua News Agency July 2, 2005)