May 7, 2007

Canada's food agency says BSE cow was exposed to infected feed

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) says last week's mad cow disease case on a five-year old cow was exposed to a small amount of contaminated material particularly during its first year of life.

British Columbia (BC) Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said the animal was culled last week and the farm handling it has been put under quarantine.

Bell also said this discovery was not completely unexpected and he doubts there will be retaliation from the United States.

The last BC dairy cow infected with mad cow disease or scientifically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was in April 2006, CFIA said that case was caused by contaminated feed.

Though a ban on using feed that may contain animal products will be in effect in July, CFIA says it still expects to find a small number of BSE cases all over Canada over the next 10 years wherein it is expected the disease has been eliminated from the national cattle herd completely.

BSE is a degenerative disease of the nervous system of cattle and is linked to a rare, fatal disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is caused if humans eat contaminated beef.

In Canada, BSE poses an extremely low risk to human health. The only case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob was detected in a person who lived in the United Kingdom for an extended period of time during the peak of its BSE epidemic.