Canada reports mad cow disease

2003-05-21 08:33

Montreal - Canada on Tuesday confirmed a case of mad cow disease in its beef-producing province of Alberta, some 17 years after BSE first appeared in Europe.

Canada's Agricultural Minister Lyle Vanclief, speaking in Edmonton, Alberta, said that a British laboratory had confirmed the disease in a cow in northern Alberta early on Tuesday.

There is "one cow that tests have shown to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which is known as BSE, mad cow disease," Vanclief said, stressing the animal did not enter the food chain and people face little risk.

The words failed to convince the United States, a huge importer of Canadian beef, as it immediately slapped a temporary import ban on Canadian beef products.

The US Department of Agriculture "is placing Canada under its BSE restriction guidelines and will not accept any ruminants or ruminant products from Canada pending further investigation," US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said.

The sickly eight-year-old Canadian cow died in January, but Canadian officials have not been able to conclusively rule out mad cow disease, so its head was sent to a British lab on Friday.

One cow

"The exact cause of (this) BSE is unknown," said Shirley McClellan, Alberta province's agricultural minister, adding that "this is one cow in one herd in our province."

The animals in the affected cow's herd have been put in quarantine and an investigation is underway, Vanclief said, noting that they will be destroyed.

Vanclief, in a television interview later with CTV News, said: "We do not know for sure whether this animal was a domestic animal or whether it was an imported animal."

In 1993, again in Canada's top beef-producing province of Alberta, there had been one case of mad cow disease, but it stemmed from a cow that came from Britain. In that case as well, the rest of the herd was slaughtered.

"The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the province of Alberta are investigating the cow's origin and how its remains were processed, tracing the animal back to its herd of origin and forward to how it was processed will provide important information to control any potential spread of the disease," Vanclief said.

After the announcement, the Canadian Cattlemen Association said in a statement: "The (affected) animal was not processed into beef. This is an isolated case and poses no risk to the health of consumers of Canadian beef.

"BSE does not spread from animal to animal. All the precautions are in place to prevent other cattle from being affected," it said.

When the first case of mad cow disease appeared in Europe, Canada and the United States took several anti-BSE measures, including a ban on feeding the crushed body parts or bone meal of other mammals to cattle.

Scientists have linked BSE and the fatal brain-wasting disease in humans, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

- AFX