Lawyers, seeking compensation for thousands of beef producers across the country, blasted the federal government's failure to keep bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) out of Canada.

 

About 150 Alberta beef producers gathered in Red Deer Wednesday (Mar 31) to get an update on a class-action lawsuit over Ottawa's handling of the BSE crisis.

 

Canada's first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a fatal disease which affects the brains of animals, was discovered in Alberta in 1993. Lawyer Cameron Pallett pointed out it was a British cow, despite the fact the Canadian government set up a surveillance system to monitor British cattle in the country.

 

"What kind of monitoring programme is that? They kept graphs, they had charts, knew where they were and all this stuff," said Pallett, who is heading up the lawsuit, told the crowd in the Stockmans Pavilion at Red Deer's Westerner Park.

 

"All they had to do was make sure infected animals don't get rendered, turned into calf starter and fed to Canadian calves. How hard is that?" he questioned.

 

The lawsuit, which began in 2005, alleges negligence by the Canadian government led to BSE spreading in Canada.

 

After an outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK in 1987, the Canadian government stopped importing British cattle and set up a programme to monitor more than 100 British cows already in Canada.

 

It was not until 1997 that Ottawa banned the use of brains, spinal cords and other animal parts, known as specified risk material (SRM), in cattle feed.

 

"Our argument is the risk was there. The government's own internal risk managers advised them of the risk, advised them that if SRM material got into the cattle it would shut the border and it would be an economic disaster," said Clint Docken, one of the lawyers involved in the action.

 

The discovery of BSE in Canadian cattle led to countries including the US and Japan shutting its borders to beef imports. The crisis sent prices plummeting, devastating many Canadian beef producers.

 

Larry Sears, a rancher and one of the litigants, said the crisis was preventable, if the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had done a better job. "We believe that there were measures and steps that could have been taken that would have prevented taking the SRM material from entering the food chain and infecting the cattle and thereby taking us out of the international marketplace," said Sears.

 

The allegations contained in the class action lawsuit have yet to be proven in court.

The lawsuit is proceeding in the Supreme Court but it is likely to be years before it reaches a courtroom.