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Environment News Service
– Thursday – May 3, 2007
Canada's Tenth Mad Cow
Rouses Concern South of the Border
OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada, May 3, 2007 (ENS) - Mad
cow disease has been found in a dairy cow on a farm in Delta, British Columbia,
the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed on Wednesday, the tenth Canadian
cow to be found with the fatal disease since 2003. South of the border in the
United States, only two cases of mad cow disease have been reported.
American legislators and cattle producers are urging the
placement of country of origin labels on meat so consumers can distinguish U.S.
from Canadian beef products.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA, said it has the
carcass of the five-and-a-half year old animal and no part of it entered the
human food or animal feed systems.
CFIA is now tracing other animals from the same herd in an
attempt to determine precisely how the cow became infected.
Mad cow disease, technically known as bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, BSE, is a progressive, brain-wasting disease in cattle. It is
part of a group of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies,
such as scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
BSE is spread by prions - misfolded proteins that
originate as regular components of neurological tissues in animals. There is no
effective treatment or vaccine and affected animals die.
Found in 26 countries, including Canada and the United
States, BSE is spread through animal feed such as meat and bone meal that
contains protein from BSE-infected animals. Cattle are naturally vegetarian and
left to themselves do not eat animal tissue.
 Most
cows are healthy, but those infected with mad cow disease invariably die.
(Photo courtesy Wikimedia)
Canada reported its first case of mad
cow disease in a native born animal on May 20, 2003 and since has reported nine
other cases. This is the second case detected in British Columbia, where another
was found in April 2006. Another case was discovered in Manitoba, while most
have originated in Alberta.
The latest case was detected on a farm south of Vancouver
by a national surveillance program that targets cattle most at risk, the
Canadian food inspection agency said. About 160,000 animals have been tested
since 2003.
The animal's age, combined with the long incubation period
for mad cow disease indicates "the cow was exposed to a very small amount of
infected material, likely during its first year of life," according to CFIA. The
mad cow disease incubation period ranges from two to eight years.
In infected cattle, BSE concentrates in certain tissues
known legally as specified risk material, including skull, brain, eyes, tonsils,
spinal cord and nervous system of cattle aged 30 months or older, and part of
the small intestine of cattle of all ages.
Cattle tissues identified as specified risk material are
not generally consumed as food, but during processing they could be included
unintentionally in meat products for human consumption.
To limit the spread of BSE among cattle, the Canada and
the United states banned most proteins, including specified risk materials, from
cattle feed in 1997.
 Meat and bone meal is a product of the
rendering industry. It is produced from mammal tissues and is thought to be
responsible for the spread of mad cow disease. It is no longer allowed in cattle
feed but is used in the United States in dog and cat food.
(Photo courtesy
University of Kentucky College of Agriculture)
To provide further animal health
protection, as of July 12, 2007, specified risk materials are also banned from
all animal feeds, pet foods and fertilizers.
On April 13, the Canadian government announced an C$80
million program to help the cattle industry remove all specified risk material
from the animal feeds, pet foods and fertilizers.
South of the border, American lawmakers and cattle
producers are not reassured.
U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat,
introduced legislation today that would prevent the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, USDA, from expanding imports of Canadian cattle until the agency
implements a system that allows consumers to see in which country their meat was
produced.
That system, known as Country of Origin Labeling, COOL,
was scheduled, by law, to be in place by September 30, 2004. But the Bush
administration has delayed its implementation several times. It is now not
scheduled to be in place until September 30, 2008.
After the first Canadian mad cow was found in 2003, the
United States banned the import of Canadian beef, but in 2006 lifted the ban for
some products. Currently cattle from Canada younger than 30 months, and boxed
beef are allowed to enter the United States. In January, the Bush administration
proposed allowing animals older than 30 months to enter the U.S. sometime later
this year.
"There is no longer any excuse for delaying implementation
of COOL," Dorgan said today. "Consumers have the right to know where their meat
is coming from, and to make their own decision - fully informed decisions -
about whether they want to be putting beef from Canada on their dinner table,
under the current circumstances.
 Under
the COOL law, labels would be placed on packages of meat indicating where the
animals were raised. (Photo courtesy Josh Hikes)
"It is clear that Canada has a
continuing problem with mad cow disease, and American families have a right to
know whether their beef is coming from Canada."
"It makes no sense to move forward so quickly with this
plan to resume imports of Canadian beef when it poses such a clear risk to an
important industry here in America," Dorgan said. "I feel bad that the Canadians
are having problems, but we have an obligation to look after our own beef
industry first."
Senators Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, and Mike
Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, joined Dorgan as co-sponsors of the bill.
National Farmers Union President Tom Buis called the
latest case of BSE "very troubling."
"It becomes even more disturbing when you consider that
USDA has proposed to re-open the Canadian border and allow live cattle imports
born after March 1, 1999 and beef of any age into the United States," said Buis.
"The Canadian border should remain closed until mandatory COOL is implemented
and Canada can demonstrate that its problem is under control."
Speaking for the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund,
United Stockgrowers of America, R-CALF USA, CEO Bill Bullard agrees.
From his office in Billings, Montana, Bullard said, "The
U.S. Department of Agriculture has failed its responsibility to adequately
protect the U.S. cattle herd, the U.S. beef supply, U.S. export markets and U.S.
consumers from Canada’s widespread problem with bovine spongiform
encephalopathy."
"Despite a very limited amount of testing, six cases of
BSE have been confirmed in Canadian cattle born after Canada implemented its
feed ban in 1997 – despite USDA’s unsupported insistence that the Canadian feed
ban has been effective in preventing the spread of the disease," Bullard said.
"Why is it that U.S. farmers and ranchers have to pay the
expense of a lawsuit in order to force USDA to do the job that hard-working
taxpayers have already paid the agency to do," asked R-CALF USA Region I
Director Margene Eiguren. "There is something wrong with our government when
economic trade goals are allowed to continually trump legitimate health and
safety concerns."
Canadian BSE mitigation measures are weak when compared to
European countries and Japan, which have comparable incidences of the disease,
R-CALF says. "Canada’s feed ban is weaker, its BSE testing program is less
inclusive, and its policies on removal of specified risk materials also are less
stringent."
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says that in 1997,
rendered protein products derived from almost all mammals were banned for use in
ruminant feed. Cows are ruminant animals, defined as any cud-chewing, even-toed,
hoofed mammal, including bison, buffalo, deer, and antelopes.
"Canadian producers may only feed their ruminants approved
animal protein products such as pure porcine, equine, poultry and fish," the
food inspection agency says. "Banned as ingredients in ruminant feeds are
'prohibited materials' - protein including meat and bone meal from mammals other
than pigs and horses. Milk, blood, gelatin, rendered animal fats or their
products have not been banned."
Mad cow disease was first confirmed in southern England in
December 1986. A rapid rise in the number of cases of BSE in the United Kingdom
followed the initial diagnosis, with an annual peak of 37,280 confirmed cases in
1992.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/2007-05-03-02.asp
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