Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow Disease is a fatal disease found in cattle. The disease is also linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), which causes degeneration of spinal cord in human that leads to patients showing neurological symptoms and death. There is currently no treatment for both diseases. BSE has a long incubation period, which makes it difficult to discover the infection at the beginning stage. Moreover, prion protein - the cause behind the disease - has high toleration. Frozen, dried, and high temperature used in pasteurisation …show more content…
The same criteria is also applied by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as the international standard for consumer’s safety when trading edible products from cattle. In order to protect consumer’s safety and appropriately follow universal practice, the Ministry of Public Health had issued Notification of the Ministry of Public Health (No.377) B.E.2559 (2016) RE: Designation of Requirements and Conditions for Import Food with Risk from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. The content of the notification can be summarised as …show more content…
4.3 Banned for importation products (Clause 5 of the notification) means the banning of importation of edible products from cattle under BSE risk status categorisation classified by region, parts of the cattle, and age of the cattle.
5. Documents or evidence required for the importation of edible products from cattle at the Food and Drug Check Point (Clause 6-8 of the notification) detailed in Table 3 (requirements for documents and evidence are varied case by case);
6. Any person fails to abide by the provision listed in this notification will be found guilty under Section 47, 49, or 50 of the Food Act B.E. 2522 (1979). Penalties for the violation of Section 50 of the Food Act, for example, are imprisonment for 6 months to 2 years and fine for 5,000 - 20,000