Canada reports case of mad cow

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/915987.asp

 

Canada reports case of mad cow

U.S. announces

ban on Canadian

meat imports

 

TORONTO, May 20 — A cow in Alberta has been diagnosed with mad cow disease,

Canadian officials announced Tuesday — the first known case in North America in

a decade. U.S. health officials immediately banned imports of cattle, beef,

beef-based products and animal feed from Canada, the Food and Drug

Administration said

 

CANADIAN AGRICULTURE Minister Lyle Vanclief told a news conference Tuesday

at the Alberta provincial legislature in Edmonton that the 8-year-old cow from a

farm in northern Alberta was slaughtered on Jan. 31 because of suspected

pneumonia.

Routine testing failed to rule out bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or

BSE, and further testing in England confirmed the finding on Tuesday, Vanclief

said.

Mad cow disease, known scientifically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy

or BSE, first erupted in Britain in 1986, and is believed to be caused by

proteins in the brain called prions. It is thought to have spread through cow

feed made with protein and bone meal from mammals.

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The FDA outlawed the feeding of mammalian meat and bone meal to cattle,

sheep and goats in 1997, a rule considered the nation’s main defense against mad

cow disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is the human form of mad cow disease and can

cause paralysis and death. Humans develop new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

when they eat meat from infected animals, scientists believe.

 

 

 

HERD PLACED UNDER QUARANTINE

“The herd has been quarantined. A trace on the animal is being done,” he

said. “The animal did not go into the food chain.”

A previous case in Canada, in 1993, involved an animal born in Britain

that was imported, he said. The herd was destroyed and there was no further

spread of the disease, Vanclief said.

It was not immediately clear where the cow in the new case was born.

Authorities have quarantined the farm and will “depopulate” the herd that

the new case is from, along with any other herds that come into question,

Vanclief said.

They will also trace the origin of the cow and how and where it was

processed as part of an investigation into any possible spread of the disease,

Vanclief said.

Canada has voluntarily halted issuing certificates for its cattle

declaring it free of BSE, said officials who stressed it was an isolated case

involving one cow of a disease that does not spread between live animals.

No case of mad cow disease has ever been found in U.S. cattle, despite

intensive testing for the disease. To help prevent its spread here, the U.S.

government routinely bans the import of meat and livestock from countries where

mad cow disease is found.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in a statement that she spoke

with Canadian officials and the situation “appears to be an isolated case.”

“Information suggests that risk to human health and the possibility of

transmission to animals in the United States is very low,” Veneman said.

The FDA and U.S. Agriculture Department are working with Canadian

officials to get more information about the sick cow, including records

concerning its past ownership and what animal feed it was given.

 

 

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