Canada Mad Cow: Latest Test Results Negative For BSE
17:54 EDT Wednesday, June 04, 2003
TORONTO (DOW JONES)--Five bulls from a Saskatchewan farm quarantined after a single cow tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Alberta were sold to a Montana farm on or about April 28 of 1997, U.S. officials said during a media briefing Wednesday.
The bulls were born in Saskatchewan in 1996, said Ron DeHaven, deputy administor of Veterinary Services at Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Brand inspection records and interviews with the Montana rancher who owned the five bulls determined that the five bulls were part of a group of 11 bulls sold from the farm to three different stockyards between 1999-2002, DeHaven said. One stockyard was in Montana and two were in South Dakota between 1999-2002, he said. "Presumably the five bulls in question were included in these 11 sold during that time period," he said.
Montana state and APHIS officials are working with the stockyard owners to determine the "final disposition" of the bulls, DeHaven said. For several reasons, the USDA believes that its "unlikely" that any of these bulls were infected with BSE, DeHaven said. For instance, the Canadian herd that the bulls came from was "depopulated" and those cattles have tested negative for BSE, including cattle born in the same year as the infected cow, he said.
DeHaven said that research indicates that a low dose of BSE infection results in a longer incubation period. "As the infected cow in Canada was about seven years old that suggests that the infected animal received a low dose of BSE," he said, adding that any exposure to BSE among the other animals in the herd would presumably be even lower.
If the U.S. investigation reveals that the five bulls were slaughtered, the slaughter would have occurred after the implementation of an FDA Ban on feeding ruminant protein to other ruminants, such as cattle or sheep, thus ensuring that the bulls didn't enter the animal feed chain, Lester Crawford, deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said during Wednesday's briefing.
"The FDA animal feed regulations in place since 1997 will have protected cattle in the U.S. from exposure to any rendered products from any of these five bulls that had died," he said.
Crawford said the risk to humans of contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, the human form of BSE, is "immeasurably small" when associated with a single cases of BSE. "Only countries that have experienced large outbreaks of BSE in their cattle herds have experienced domestically acquired variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease in people," he said.
No case of BSE has been identified in the U.S. since surveillance started in 1989, Crawford said. The only case of variants Creutzfeldt-Jacob in the U.S. was diagnosed in 2002, but originated in the U.K. during the period of greatest exposure to contaminated beef in the U.K., he said.
So far, the Alberta cow remains the only confirmed case of BSE in Canada. Investigators have quarantined 18 farms during the course of their investigation - though some qurantines have been lifted after tests came back negative for BSE - and slaughtered 1,500 cows.
The latest test results, rapid diagnostic tests conducted on cows from four quarantined farms, were negative for BSE, said Brian Evans, chief veterinary officer for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. These farms included three British Columbia farms believed to have received feed rendered from the infected cow's remains and an Alberta farm believed to trace back to the infected cow's birthplace.
The mad-cow discovery prompted the U.S., Canada's biggest trading partner, and several other countries to temporarily ban the import of Canadian beef, crippling Canada's C$26 billion beef industry. Asked when the ban will be lifted, the FDA's Crawford said U.S. officials are waiting for the investigation to be completed.
The CFIA is awaiting further test results from 500 animals as part of its tracback and trace-forward inquiries and will soon begin slaughtering cattle from a secondary line of inquiry that could lead to the infected cow's birthplace, Evans said.
-Stuart Weinberg, Dow Jones Newswires; 416-306-2026;
stuart.weinberg@dowjones.com
Dow Jones Newswires
06-04-03 1603ET
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