Thursday, May 22, 2003
Canada struggles with mad cow as countries ban its beef (9:38 am)
By Stefanie Batcho
TORONTO -- Canada grappled Wednesday with the repercussions of mad cow disease as more countries banned Canadian beef after news of one confirmed case in Alberta.
Canadian officials tried to limit the damage to the industry after one eight-year-old Angus cow, killed in January, was confirmed Tuesday to have mad cow disease.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was discovered in Britain in 1986, triggering a slump in beef consumption across Europe and the subsequent slaughter of millions of cows to try to restore consumers' faith in eating beef.
Scientists have linked consumption of BSE-infected beef with to the fatal brain-wasting disease in humans, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Canada, the world's third-largest beef exporter, faces a major challenge in thwarting the perception that all Canadian beef is now tainted.
Already stung by the economic fallout from its Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) outbreak in March, Canadian officials insisted the cow never entered the human food supply.
The United States, where 90 percent of Canada's 575,000 tons of beef exports went last year, imposed a temporary ban Tuesday on Canadian beef.
"We'll all make sure that the embargo is as limited as possible, as short-lived as possible," Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew said in an interview with the CBC.
But Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and the Philippines have also banned Canadian beef products.
Canadian officials are now trying to determine the origin of the infected cow, which was killed in January and rejected as food after appearing to have pneumonia. The cow was tested this week.
In 1993, there already had been one case of mad cow disease in Canada -- again in its top beef-producing province of Alberta -- but it stemmed from a cow that came from Britain.
This infected cow had lived on a ranch near Fairview, Alberta, and was born after a 1990 ban on imported European cattle, so it appears to be the first homegrown case of mad cow.
Four ranches, including the ranch near Fairview, Alberta where the infected cow had lived for the past three years, are now quarantined.
Doctor Claude Lavigne with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's animal products directorate said at an Edmonton, Alberta, news conference that "the cow in question was at one point in its life in these two other herds."
Saskatchewan provincial agriculture minister Clay Serby told reporters that the cow was likely born in the province, which borders Alberta.
Officials declined to say where the other two ranches are located.
The 150-head herd at the Fairview ranch is slated to be destroyed, so officials can conduct post-mortem tests to see if others were infected.
Currently, there is no way to test a living animal for mad cow disease, although many labs around the world are working on creating such a test.
Lavigne, who said results were expected within three days of the lab receiving samples, also said officials were trying to track down some 200 cows in the same herd and which had been transferred elsewhere. He said she had probably calved five or six times.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in his first remarks on the matter, tried to drum up support for Canada's 7.5-billion-dollar (US$5.5-billion) cattle and beef industry by having Alberta steak for lunch in Ottawa.
"This is a problem that is with one herd and one cow within the heard.
"Let's wait to see what will happen," he said.
In August, Canada reported its first case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in a Saskatchewan man, whom officials said contracted the disease during multiple, long-term stays in the United Kingdom during the peak of mad cow disease there. AFP
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