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Canada Food Agency Confirms 8th Case of Mad Cow (Update5)

By Greg Quinn and Jeff Wilson

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Canada has confirmed the country's eighth case of mad-cow disease in an animal in Alberta, less than a month after the U.S. suspended a plan to allow more imports of Canadian beef.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency testing confirmed the case in a beef cow that's between eight and 10 years old, Alain Charette, an agency spokesman, said by telephone today in Ottawa. No part of the animal's carcass entered the human or animal feed systems, the agency said in a statement.

The latest case reduces the chances the U.S. Department of Agriculture will ease restrictions on shipments of Canadian cattle more than 30 months old, and on beef from older animals, a commodity analyst said. The U.S. said July 28 it won't decide on expanding beef and cattle trade with Canada until the conclusion of a joint probe into a seventh case reported last month.

Canada confirmed the seventh case of the disease July 13, in a 50-month-old dairy cow born after feed restrictions were imposed in 1997. The U.S. wants to know how that animal acquired the disease, since it was born in 2002, long after Canada imposed the new feed rules, USDA spokesman Ed Loyd said last month.

The age of the latest cow to test positive suggests it was exposed before the 1997 feed ban came into effect, or ``during its early implementation,'' the Canadian inspection agency's statement said. ``The estimated age of this animal is consistent with those of previous Canadian cases and exposure to a very low level'' of the disease, the agency said.

`Trash Can'

Canada is trying to verify the farm where the animal was born, so the agency can determine the status of other cows in the herd and of local feed.

``The idea of increasing the age of Canadian cattle and beef imports will be thrown in the trash can, if it wasn't already,'' David Kruse, president of agricultural broker and researcher CommStock Investments in Royal, Iowa, said by telephone today. ``The U.S. won't shut the door on imports, but it will not allow imports from older cattle.''

Canada's food inspection agency in June again tightened its animal feed restrictions to speed up domestic eradication of mad- cow disease, or BSE, which stands for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The U.S. banned Canadian cattle and beef in May 2003 after Canada's first case of BSE. When the ban was eased in August 2003 to allow imports of younger cattle and boneless beef from those animals, the USDA said it hoped to eventually end all restrictions. The U.S. only began importing younger Canadian cattle in July 2005 because of a court challenge.

USDA Secretary

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said today in a statement he doesn't anticipate a change in the status of beef imports from Canada, and will continue to work on a proposed rule to allow animals over 30 months of age from countries ``at minimal risk for BSE.'' The rules in place now are ``are providing effective consumer protection,'' he said.

While USDA's risk assessment already ``anticipated multiple cases of BSE'' in Canada, lab findings from the latest case will help ``ensure that the conclusions we have drawn about the proposed rule's effectiveness are still accurate,'' Johanns' statement said.

Scientists say cattle under 30 months old are at little risk of contracting BSE, which has a rare but fatal human variant. The USDA argues beef from cattle of any age is safe, once the tissues that harbor the BSE-causing agent, including the brain and spinal cord, have been removed from the carcass.

`Jolt of Anxiety'

The discovery of a new case always brings a ``jolt of anxiety,'' though it remains consistent with what the industry and government had anticipated, Rob McNabb, general manager of operations for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said in a telephone interview from Calgary.

``We and the U.S. expect to continue to find cases that were perhaps born before the feed ban was implanted,'' McNabb said. ``We strongly believe in the science basis of the risk management of this and we certainly have the highest level of confidence for the protection of the public and our animal health,'' he said.

Some U.S. cattle groups are urging the U.S. to take additional steps to ensure Canada's mad-cow problems don't adversely affect U.S. beef exports. The Rancher-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, a non-profit group based in Billing, Montana, today repeated its call for a total ban on Canadian cattle and beef until completion of a comprehensive analysis on the latest cases.

``This raises a tremendous amount of concern, especially in light of the fact that it does not appear Canada's meat and bone meal ban, or feed ban, was effective,'' Chuck Kiker, R-CALF's U.S. president, said in a statement.

Cattle Futures

Today's case won't have ``much impact on the price of U.S. cattle unless there is a shift in consumer attitudes'' about the potential for increased risk of BSE in the U.S. food system, CommStock's Kruse said. ``Right now the attitude is that the system will find the diseased animals,'' he said.

Cattle futures for October delivery rose 0.025 cents to 91.45 cents a pound on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange today, the second gain this week after prices fell 1.8 percent last week, the first such drop in three weeks.

Most-active futures are up 12 percent in the past year as domestic demand for beef improved and Japan reopened its market to U.S. beef imports last month.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=afUDtD7cGs1M&refer=canada  To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Quinn in Ottawa at gquinn1@bloomberg.net ; Jeff Wilson in Chicago at jwilson29@bloomberg.net .

                            This page was last updated on Monday, October 27, 2008.