April 3, 2007

CFIA updates investigation on ninth BSE case 
 

THE Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has posted its investigation updates into Canada's latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), finding nothing to indicate that Canadian beef poses a higher-than-previously-understood risk.

The report said: "The case confirms what was already known about an extremely low level of BSE infectivity having existed in Canada's feed system during the late 1990s and early 2000 within a previously determined geographic area and time interval."

The latest BSE occurrence was an unregistered Angus bull born in the spring of 2000 on the northern Alberta farm where it died in January. The government, through a series of tests, that the animal had BSE.

CFIA had averted worries, saying no part of the carcass entered the human food supply or animal feed chain.

Upon confirmation, government agencies have started a two-pronged investigation looking at the feed and 593 cohort animals of the dead bull. One of the cohort animals was exported.

The importing country has been notified, the federal agency said and the second prong of the investigation have inspected at feed ingredients in the first year of its life.

The CFIA affirmed that review of the manufacture, transportation and handling of these feeds did not demonstrate a link between production practices for a specific product and potential cross-contamination with prohibited material.

The agency also said an absence of records made it impossible to discount that cross-contamination either at a manufacturer of vitamin premix or in transport might have been the origin of the bull's fatal infection.

The conclusion of the report said: "No direct link between specific products and production practices associated with potential cross-contamination can be made in this case," CFIA said.

"Facilities that handle prohibited material and manufacture ruminant rations are considered higher risk and did manufacture products to which the positive animal had access. The facilities identified in the investigation and that handled prohibited material was each supplied exclusively by the same rendering facility common to previous investigations."