January 21, 2005

New Canadian mad cow cases raise concerns

At least six animals that were raised in Canada with an eight-year-old cow that had mad cow disease were exported to the U.S., Canadian officials said.

Investigations are being carried out to determine if any were slaughtered and whether the meat may have entered the human food chain, said Alain Charette, spokesman for Canada's Food Inspection Agency. They were among 141 animals born on the same Alberta farm within a year of the cow whose mad cow infection was confirmed Jan. 2, he said. Canada confirmed another mad cow case -- its third -- on Jan. 11.

Canada's recent mad cow cases have put pressure on the U.S. to scrap a plan to ease a ban on cattle and beef from Canada imposed in May 2003 after the country's first case of the brain- wasting livestock illness. In 2002, Canada exported about 1.7 million head of cattle to the U.S., accounting for about 5 percent of U.S. slaughter.

Gary Little, the country's chief veterinarian, said nine animals found on the infected cow's farm were slaughtered on Jan. 10 and tested negative for mad cow disease, which is formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

Ron DeHaven, head of the Agriculture Department's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, said earlier this month that there was little threat to the public health from the first cow from the infected animal's birth herd traced to the U.S.

The USDA "believes it is extremely unlikely that this imported cow would have been infected'' with BSE, DeHaven said in a statement. "Even at the height of mad cow infection in Europe and the United Kingdom, it was extremely rare to have more than one animal in the same herd affected.''

The only U.S. case of mad cow disease with a fatal human variant was found in Washington state in Dec. 2003, in a Canadian-born animal.

Officials have said the cows may have been infected by eating feed that contained ground-up parts of other ruminants. The ruminant-to-ruminant feeding practice was banned by both Canada and the U.S. in August 1997.