Oh, how convenient, they've "traced" the sick WA cow to Alberta Canada, where it was born sometime between 1997 and 1999. hmm, sounds fishy to me:
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Sick cow traced to Canada
Shankar Vedantam, Blaine Harden, Washington Post Sunday, December 28, 2003
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An ear tag on a slaughtered Washington state Holstein cow found to be infected with mad cow disease shows the animal came from Alberta, Canada, where another case of mad cow disease was discovered in May, U.S. government officials said Saturday.
The breakthrough could turn what was thought to be the first case of the disease in the United States into an investigation about the second case in North America -- opening a raft of questions about where else the infection might spread.
The Holstein was part of a herd of 74 animals that was imported in August 2001, and importation records show the herd was headed to a Mattawa, Wash., dairy facility, officials said. Two months later, records show the infected Holstein was sent to the Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, Wash., from where it was sent to slaughter 19 days ago. It is not known where the other animals were sent or whether any of them are infected.
"Most of them are likely still alive," said W. Ron DeHaven, deputy administrator and chief veterinary officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Because records on dairy cattle are typically very good, we feel confident we will be able to determine the whereabouts of most if not all these animals in the next several days."
Tracking the Holstein's roots to Canada will force investigators to confront the possible links between the Washington state Holstein and the Alberta case of mad cow disease. Officials do not yet know whether the animals lived on the same farm or ate the same contaminated feed, which is how the disease most often is transmitted. As a result, they cannot answer the most pressing questions: Which other animals ate that feed and where are they now?
However, the discovery that the infected cow came from Canada could be important to beef exporters who are trying to bolster international confidence in the U.S. beef industry. The finding would suggest the cow came to this country already infected, rather than getting sick because of conditions here.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association on Saturday said the indication that the infected cow was from Canada means U.S. trading partners should reopen their borders to American beef. The farm organization said a beef export monitoring program would allow importers to separate beef of Canadian origin if they believe additional precautions are needed.
Serious discrepancies still dog the investigation: The tag number from the infected Holstein matched Canadian export records, but those records also show the animal was born in April 1997; U.S. farm records had indicated the Holstein was born around 1999. Even more troubling, Canadian records show the cow had two calves before it was shipped across the border; U.S. records show the Holstein was a heifer, an animal that has not yet borne calves.
Brian Evans, the chief veterinary officer with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said Saturday that officials were trying to track down the two calves the Holstein is recorded to have given birth to in Canada. If those can be matched with DNA from tissue samples taken from the Holstein before it was slaughtered -- or from two living calves that it bore at Mabton -- Evans said, investigators would have a way "to make sure we are talking about the same animal."
Experts believe that only a minority of cattle that eat infected feed will become sick. But David Ropeik, director of Risk Communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which has studied the potential impact of mad cow disease in the United States, said it is difficult to quantify the exact risk to an individual animal.
Canada instituted a ban in 1997 to keep cattle brain and spinal tissue from being fed to healthy cattle. The same year, the United States also banned the practice, which is believed to be the way that misshapen proteins called prions, which cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, are transmitted. The animal disease is associated with a fatal brain-wasting disorder in humans called variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, and gives the brain a sponge-like appearance. There is no cure, and about 154 people have died from the disease, mostly in Britain.
Government officials insist that the nation's food supply is safe. They say that the feed ban on cattle brain and spinal tissue keeps prions out of the human and animal food supply. Still, out of "an abundance of caution" regulators recalled all the meat that passed through a Moses Lake slaughterhouse on the same day as the infected Holstein. Two meat processors have asked grocery stores to pull the material from shelves, but some customers in Oregon and Washington have called stores to say they have already consumed the beef.
Large numbers of dairy and beef cattle were exported in the 1990s by Canada to the United States -- especially the Northwest. Because of overproduction, said Arthur C. Linton, a cattle geneticist at Washington State University in Prosser, Wash., the animals could be exported at a very competitive cost.
Following the discovery of the Alberta case of mad cow disease this May, the United States suspended beef and cattle imports from Canada. Beef products, meat products and cuts of meat are now being allowed in, DeHaven said.
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Background
History of the Holstein cow that tested positive for mad cow disease.
-- Between 1997 and 1999: Born in Alberta, Canada.
-- August 2001: Enters United States in Eastport, Idaho, with 73 other cows. Delivered to a Mattawa, Wash., finishing company that feeds young cattle until maturation.
-- October 2001: Sold to Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, Wash.
-- Dec. 9, 2003: Slaughtered at Vern's Moses Lake Meats in Moses Lake, Wash. Carcass sent to Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., for deboning. Meat cuts sent to two processing plants in the Portland, Ore., area -- Willamette Valley Meats and Interstate Meats -- which ground the beef and sold some to retailers in Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada.
-- Dec. 11: Testing samples from the cow arrive at U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Ames, Iowa.
-- Dec. 22: Preliminary test results are positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow disease.
-- Dec. 24: USDA recalls all meat processed at Vern's Moses Lake Meats Dec. 9.
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