Irritated Wives a concern in North America
Reuters
Canadian Mad Cow Case Triggers Shock Wave
Tuesday May 20, 4:33 pm ET
By Jeffrey Jones
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada reported its first case of mad cow disease in a decade on Tuesday, sending shock waves through the North American food industry just weeks after the country's economy was damaged by the SARS threat.
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A cow in Alberta, Canada's top cattle-producing province and a major beef exporter to the United States, tested positive for brain-wasting bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in a test taken after it was slaughtered last winter, government officials said.
"It was (detected) just a few days ago. The actual test was taken Jan. 31 from a cow in Fairview, Alberta," an official with the Canadian Beef Export Federation said. "It's just one isolated case of an eight-year-old cow."
But the report sent a major chill through the continent's economy, triggering a U.S. ban on Canadian beef and sparking a sell-off in cattle futures and food-related stocks such as hamburger giant McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD - News).
Canada's currency was also pressured.
The animal "did not enter the food chain" and its northern Alberta herd will be slaughtered, as will any other found to be affected, Canadian Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief told a nationally televised news conference in the Alberta capital of Edmonton. He said he did not know the cow's origin.
Other Alberta herds had yet to be quarantined, a government scientist said. "We've only been investigating this for about 24 hours," he said.
The United States quickly slapped a temporary ban on imports of Canadian cattle, sheep and goats as well as meat and other products. But the U.S. agriculture department said the threat of transmission of the disease to animals in the United States was very low and it planned no further measures.
There has not been a reported mad cow case in the United States. Canada's only other case was in 1993, but the animal was imported from Britain, where the disease led to the slaughter of 3.7 million cattle and a U.S. ban on British imports. Its carcass was destroyed, as was its herd.
The new case is a major blow to Alberta, where ranching is as ingrained in the culture as it is in Texas. About 5.5 million cattle dot the landscape, outnumbering people by almost 2.5 million.
The western province accounts for nearly 60 percent of Canada's beef production, providing C$3.8 billion ($2.8 billion) in annual farm cash receipts.
In 2002, Alberta shipped more than half a million live cattle to the United States, even as ranchers faced financial crisis as a drought made hay scarce.
STOCKS, FUTURES, CURRENCY TUMBLE
On Wall St., shares of Tyson Foods Inc. (NYSE:TSN - News), the biggest U.S. beef processor, fell 5 percent and McDonald's sank nearly 7 percent.
U.S. cattle futures tumbled their allowable daily limit on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The Canadian dollar, which has been soaring in recent weeks, skidded.
"It still remains to be seen how serious it is but the news is not good for Canada, without a doubt," said a currency trader at a major Canadian bank. "We're trading off the headlines."
In April, Canada's economy was hit by fears over flu-like severe acute respiratory syndrome, especially in Toronto, where trade and tourism sputtered. Canada recently declared victory in the battle against SARS, but not before it killed 24 people in the Toronto area.
Some experts believe mad cow disease may have been spread by cows in Britain who were fed the remains of sheep contaminated with scrapie. Other scientists say the disease arose from a mutation in a cow in the 1970s.
So far more than 80 people in Britain and Europe have died from the human variation of mad cow, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
(With reporting by Gilbert Le Gras, David Ljunggren, Amran Abocar, Brad Dorfman, Randy Fabi, Richard Cowan)
($1=$1.34 Canadian) |
