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Canadian authorities have BSE in a 50-month old beef cow
from Alberta, and the discovery has U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
Mike Johanns worried.
"The diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in an
animal born roughly four and a half years after the implementation
of the 1997 ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban does raise questions
that must be answered," Johanns said in a statement late
Thursday afternoon. "We need a thorough understanding of
all the circumstances involved in this case to assure our
consumers that Canada's regulatory system is effectively
providing the utmost protections to consumers and livestock."
The issue is even more worrisome because the U.S. feed ban
is not as restrictive as Canada's, and the find may cause
overseas markets to question the effectiveness of North
America's preventive strategies, even though the U.S. does
not allow live animals of that age to enter the country.
The animal is the youngest BSE case discovered in Canada,
as Ranchers-Cattlemen's Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers
of America points out. This indicates a higher level of
infectivity than assumed by both Canadian and U.S. authorities,
says Chuck Kiker, R-CALF president, and refutes a key USDA
assumption in reopening the border to the import of Canadian
cattle.
"USDA believed the BSE incubation period in Canada was longer
than the BSE incubation period in countries like the U.K.,
where the average was estimated to be 4.2 years," Kiker
said in a statement. "USDA assumed Canadian BSE cases would
be detected only in older Canadian cattle born prior to
Canada's 1997 feed ban."
The new case, Canada's ninth overall counting an imported
British animal and another born in Canada but discovered
in Washington state, suggests that a higher-than-believed
level of infectivity is still present in Canada's herd.
Johanns said that USDA will send experts to Canada to investigate
the find "particularly as it relates to how this animal
may have been exposed to BSE-infected material."
Canadian authorities have surmised that the animal may have
been infected by feed processed with machinery that had
not been thoroughly cleaned after the feed ban was instituted
in 1997. That would assume that infected matter could have
remained in the feed system for at least four years after
the ban's implementation.
R-CALF suggests that the Canadian feed ban, which outlaws
protein from cattle in feed meant for cattle, may not have
been effectively enforced, or that Canadian cattle are in
some way at greater risk than U.S. cattle. |
