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Japan woke up on Tuesday to news it could be facing an outbreak of mad cow disease only months after the government played down warnings that the nation's cattle were at risk.

Ministry officials said chances of a serious outbreak in Japan were low after news that a five-year old cow had tested positive in Asia's first reported case of the brain-wasting disease also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

But the nation's food and agriculture industry was bracing for a possible crisis as some experts warned that the disease, whose human variant is thought to have killed some 100 people in Britain, could be more widespread.

The Holstein cow from a farm in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo was slaughtered on August 6th after showing classic symptoms of the disease, including difficulty in standing. A test on its brain proved positive for the disease.

"This case is regrettable," Tsutomu Takebe, the agriculture minister told reporters, saying the ministry was making every effort to deal with the case and keep the public fully informed.

The Health Ministry has banned sales of meat products from the farm where the cow was bred, and said the ban could be extended to other farms. South Korea and Singapore moved quickly on Tuesday to slap temporarily bans on meat imports from Japan.

Dr. Stephen Dealler, a microbiologist who has worked on mad cow disease, said the case may not lead to a British-style epidemic but would linger for months as more cows were tested.

"By the time you see your first case, you've already spread the disease quite a long way," he told Reuters. "By the time you've seen your first one, you are going to see a lot more."

The farm in the town of Shiroi where the infected cow was found also has 49 other dairy cows, but a Chiba prefecture official said these were healthy. Chiba prefecture itself has about 60,000 cows used mostly for supplying the Tokyo area.

An official panel is to announce on Tuesday whether remains of the diseased cow would be sent to specialist facilities in either Britain or Switzerland for further tests.

Norio Tsuruoka, an official in the Chiba government's livestock division, said about 3,000 gallons of milk from the cow had been sold over two years before it was slaughtered, although its meat was not used.

Scientists believe milk is unlikely to spread the disease.

Although Japan is famous for its expensive cuts of beef, it exports very little — only 358 tons of beef on the bone in 2000 — and relies on imports for about two-thirds of its beef consumption.

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