The Ministry of Education said it did not encourage schools to use U.S beef and beef intestines in their meals until the products were pronounced as safe by the health authorities.

The beef was included in more general regulations banning schools from using any disputed food stuffs in meals for students, said Wang Chun-chuan, director-general of the Department of Physical Education at the ministry. Wang said the ministry had previously banned other foods because of their high sugar content.

Nevertheless, the final decision still was in the hands of the individual schools, he said.

In a separate decision, the Ministry of National Defense announced yesterday that all beef served to the military until the end of 2010 would be imported from either Australia or New Zealand.

Ministry spokesman Yu Sy-tue said the military only signed agreements with suppliers of frozen beef from the two countries last August. Since the deals would remain valid until late next year, the 200,000 soldiers and officers at Taiwan's military bases would not face U.S. beef during that period, Yu said.

The military said it would check the origin of food served at its installations and conduct random inspections in cooperation with other government departments.

Meanwhile, experts warned that the danger from beef could be transferred to other types of meat. Former Environmental Protection Administration chief Chen Chung-hsin warned about dangerous beef being turned into feed for pigs, making pork also risky to consume.

Taiwan and the U.S. announced last week that from Nov. 10, the island would allow the import of bone-in beef, ground beef, intestines, spinal cords and brains from cattle younger than 30 months not contaminated with specific risk materials.

Meat products like the ground beef and intestines have been described as potentially risky because they could cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease in humans. There is no known cure for the disease.