Another Mad Cow Suspected Cases

[spudchucker]

As a Canadian currently living in Colorado, I can't recall seeing much about mad cow down here. I think I saw a 3 line blurb in USA today once. From what I can see, it is pretty much a non issue here.

[Willowcreek]

I guess you don't consider the Wall Street Journal as being a very big publication-eh...

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Canada Mad-Cow Case Shows Safeguard Lapse



By TAMSIN CARLISLE

Wall Street Journal

August 28, 2006



CALGARY, Alberta -- The case of a relatively young Canadian mad cow points up the difficulties of enforcing feed bans to curb the spread of the disease.



Last week Canadian officials, in their investigation of a 50-month-old Alberta dairy cow diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, on July 13, concluded that the problem arose from contaminated feed -- years after feed safeguards were put into place. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it has launched an investigation into enforcement of its feed restrictions.



The dairy cow was the youngest animal in Canada so far diagnosed with BSE, a fatal brain-wasting disease. Other cases involved older animals that contracted the disease before cattle-feed restrictions were put into place to prevent the spread of the disease, which can have a years' long incubation period.



The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a statement Thursday that one commercial feed facility "may have permitted contamination of a single batch of cattle feed with prohibited material." It didn't identify the manufacturing facility or farm involved but said the entire batch was shipped to the infected cow's farm.



In an interview Friday, an agency spokesman said the incident may have involved failure to flush equipment between processing runs, leading to contamination of cattle feed with material derived from dead cattle or other ruminant animals such as sheep or goats.



Both Canada and the U.S. instituted tougher cattle-feed regulations in August 1997, in response to the discovery that cattle most commonly contract mad-cow disease by ingesting ground-up remains of infected animals. Under the ban, cattle could no longer be given a diet that contained such remains, which previously had been added to feed as a protein boost. However, up until this June, Canada continued to allow feed prepared for nonruminant animals such as pigs and chickens to contain ruminant remains.



The apparent lapse in the feed safeguards could exacerbate U.S. concerns about Canadian beef and cattle imports, possibly delaying or even jeopardizing a long-awaited U.S. Department of Agriculture rule that proposes to allow imports of cattle over 30 months old from countries considered at "minimal risk" for BSE. Imports of cattle under 30 months and the beef that comes from them are already allowed into the U.S. because the risk with younger animals is considered very low.



In a statement Friday, the USDA said it will factor the Canadian findings into its risk assessment for the rule change.



Humans can contract a form of the disease by consuming contaminated beef.



Canada has so far discovered eight indigenous cases of BSE, including its latest one last week, while the U.S. has discovered three cases, including one in a cow imported from Canada. In 2003, the U.S. banned all imports of Canadian beef in response to the first Canadian BSE case but quickly resumed most beef imports.





online.wsj.com

[coppertop]

And how many cows have been tested in the US for BSE ????

[Willowcreek]

coppertop posted Aug 28, 2006 16:13
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And how many cows have been tested in the US for BSE ????

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The last figure I saw was over 650,000...

[spudchucker]

I don't read the Wall Street Journal on a regular basis so I didn't see the article. The local store doesn't carry it either. I am a little curious as to why the story didn't come out until the 28th when the mad cow was confirmed on the 23rd. Could someone have been pushing them to write the article?
If we keep weeding these cows out, sooner or later we will put the disease behind us.

[crossfield_beef]

Alberta cow likely got BSE from infected feed: CFIA
Link
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2006/08/25/bse-feed.html
<beginning of paste from article>
A particular incident was documented in one commercial feed facility that may have permitted the contamination of a single batch of cattle feed with prohibited material," CFIA said in a news release Thursday.

"The entire batch of feed was shipped to the BSE-positive animal's farm. This particular batch of feed is the most probable source of infection."

According to the agency's report, two feed operations received prohibited materials from a rendering plant implicated in previous mad cow disease investigations. The report said the investigation is examining the operations at the feed mills. <end of paste>

We as producers need to know which feed processor this feed came from and we can make decisions ourselves regarding which feed suppliers we use for our business. The cattle producers can make intelligent decisions to protect our industry. However, in order to do so, we need accurate information. PRODUCERS SHOULD DEMAND TO KNOW WHERE THIS FEED CAME FROM.

[wd40]

Fact is Willowcreek - The cause or causes of BSE is still ONLY "Theory" - there is no objective science that can pinpoint the cause of BSE.

Feed ban or no feed ban, not the enforcement of such is going to GUARANTEE nor elliminate BSE.

So go ride another hobbie horse.

[jensend]

willowcreek: And how many cows have been tested in the US for BSE ????

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The last figure I saw was over 650,000...


in a phony testing program the rest of the world figured out long ago which is why we got into japan easier than the usa.

[grassfarmer]

crossfield-beef note the part where it says "This particular batch of feed is the most probable source of infection." Most probable being the key words - this is an unproven theory and no-one anywhere has ever been able to link any case of BSE to any type of feed scientifically. Why get mad at the feed manufacturers? what will you gain from that?
We are putting BSE behind us, consumers have no appreciable concerns about beef so just relax and it will pass. Compared to Europe we have got off so lightly on the whole BSE deal.

[Willowcreek]

grassfarmer- Too big an issue to die- especially with the monthly new case revelations of new and younger cases...
Like the Canadian author of this article stresses--It needs to be confronted...

I see where the US producers are just now realizing what I've been trying to stress for the last couple of months- the 50 month old positive would have qualified as a 15 month old to be shipped into the US, and according to the CFIA and all recent studies, was probably already infected by that time!!!


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Canada must scrutinize the feed industry



Aug. 29, 2006. 01:00 AM

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS

The Star

Canada



Canada's largest market for beef, the United States, postponed plans to allow more imports of Canadian cattle over the age of 30 months in light of this country's latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) found in Alberta.



It is Canada's fifth case in 2006 and the eighth since 2003, when the disease was first found in this country.



Number 7 this summer was only 4 years old, though. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) seemed far from concerned, stating that no part of the latest cow's carcass entered the human food or animal-feed systems.



Finding more BSE cases in Canada should be expected, but more work to manage future cases is certainly required.



This summer, the United States announced it would cut its mad-cow testing program by almost 90 per cent, after data collected over two years showed a very low level of the disease in the domestic herd.



This would suggest that North American authorities are perhaps becoming nonchalant about the BSE scare without knowing much about the disease itself.



The last Canadian BSE case in July was born five years after the feed ban that prevented parts from cattle and other ruminants being used in feed for such animals.



For years, the CFIA argued that the 1997 feed ban would eradicate most latent BSE cases from Canadian herds.



With this last case, some have suggested that an old bag of feed produced before the bans or accidents that occurred in feed mills may have caused the disease to spread.



The possibility of maternal transmission of BSE, from cow to calf, was also mentioned after the latest case was found.



As we continue to learn about BSE and international trades concerning food safety, a guessing game is hardly an astute strategy for reassuring our trading partners.



Indeed, surveillance of the disease itself has become an even more important issue.



So far, Canada has tested almost 50,000 cases, a great improvement from 3,000 a few years go — but it is still far from enough.



Increased monitoring across the supply chain would not only serve the purpose of managing risks, it would help us understand how the disease is contracted and how it evolves in time.



Although the CFIA recently strengthened feed control in Canada, the feed industry needs to be better scrutinized. Monitoring will lead to more evidence-based analysis, which is essential for scientific research.



It would also allow the supply chain to equip itself for future threatening diseases that could someday strike the cattle industry.



Methods to detect the disease should also be reviewed.



For example, a Canadian company based in Alberta is confident it has a cheap, groundbreaking test for mad-cow disease. The only approved BSE test in Canada has to be performed post-mortem on the animal.



It is now technologically possible to test live animals and detect the disease at an early stage.



Similar technologies exist in the United States and Europe.



These would decrease the costs of monitoring capabilities while increasing our monitoring capacity and accuracy, and, at the same time, vastly increasing our knowledge of the disease itself.



Over the last three years, we have realized that the Americans are the "canaries" signalling to us when it is time to take action.



Since the Americans are reluctant to test all their cattle for BSE, Canada is synchronistically also not ready to do so, and the CFIA adamantly defends current food-safety policies. It has no other choice but to do so.



The CFIA applies rigorous methods to manage domestic risks, both for the industry and consumers.



Better monitoring, though, would democratize the entire process for both the industry and Canadian consumers.



The focus now should also be on learning, not just on managing risks. Canadian consumers deserve better protection.



In enhancing our BSE monitoring strategy, scientists will acquire better knowledge of the disease itself, and so will our trading partners have better reassurance on the quality of our products.



With the discovery of the eighth BSE case in Canada, study of the disease and improved monitoring clearly represents a far more reasonable course than the "business as usual" tack prevailing in the industry and in the Canadian policy approach since the initial crisis with the discovery of the first BSE case in this country.





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Sylvain Charlebois is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Regina.





thestar.com