TOKYO Aug 22 2002 - Japan confirmed another case of mad cow disease on Thursday, the first since May and the fifth since an outbreak last September sent shock waves through the food sector and devastated consumer confidence.

Final tests on a six-year-old Holstein dairy cow slaughtered in Kanagawa prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, came up positive for the brain-wasting disease, a Health Ministry official said. The ministry will hold a meeting of animal-health experts later on Friday to review the results for official confirmation.

Also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), mad cow disease has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has killed about 125 people worldwide but none in Japan.

The outbreak--the first in Asia--has gutted Japan's appetite for beef, hammered earnings of food companies and restaurants and shaken faith in the country's food-safety standards.

Since October, Japan has screened all cows slaughtered for beef for the disease. The Health Ministry said about one million cows had been screened for BSE between October 18, 2001, and August 17, of which 95 came up positive in the preliminary results.

Cattle are believed to contract mad cow disease by eating meat-and-bone meal (MBM) contaminated with BSE, but officials have not pinned down the source of the outbreak in Japan.

An investigating panel earlier this year slammed the Japanese government for ignoring warnings from both the World Health Organization and the European Commission that could have prevented the crisis.