Mad cow case rocks Canada

01/23/2006

The Australian
From correspondents in Ottawa
January 24, 2006

CANADIAN authorities have announced a new case of mad cow disease, sparking a fresh crisis in its beef industry, already rocked by export bans and multi-billion dollar losses after a previous scare.

Brian Evans of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said the six-year-old cow tested positive late Sunday after it showed symptoms of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

He described Canada’s fourth recorded case as “unwelcome but not unexpected”.

“The geographic location and age of this animal are consistent with the three domestic cases previously detected,” the CFIA said in a statement.

Some 87,000 cows have been tested since 2003, when the last case surfaced. This prompted a US ban on Canadian cattle imports and soured cow trade relations between the United States and Japan which feared all North American cattle might be at risk.

“This detection is consistent with a low level of disease and does not indicate an increased risk of BSE in Canada,” officials said.

The case came as the United States tried on Sunday to get Japan, formerly the US industry’s biggest market, to reopen its market to US beef.

Canada and US cattle industries were once heavily intertwined. The United States took some 80 per cent of Canadian beef exports before a ban was imposed after the 2003 case.

Japan announced on Saturday it was suspending all US beef imports and ordered all US beef off the market, weeks after lifting a two-year embargo, after a shipment contained spinal columns, which were banned as a precaution against mad cow disease.