MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US confirms second case of mad cow

Tests have confirmed a second case of mad cow disease in United States, reported Friday the US Department of Agriculture.

An internationally recognized laboratory in Weybridge, England confirmed the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, following conflicting results in US labs, said US Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns.

However there was no risk for human health since the animal was a "downer", meaning it was unable to walk and banned from the food supply.

Apparently the cow was born before August 1997 when the ban on animal meal for cattle feeding was imposed in the United States.

The US Agriculture Department announced it had begun an epidemiological investigation to determine the origin of the cow which died in November 2004. The first tests were not convincing and later trials in early June came back positive so the USDA decided to send samples to England and its own labs in Ames, Iowa, which confirmed the disease.

The first case of mad cow in the US was reported in the state of Washington in 2003, a dairy cow imported from Canada. Since 2003 three cases of BSE have been confirmed in Canada. "I am encouraged that our interlocking safeguards are working exactly as intended", added Secretary Johanns. "The animal was blocked from entering the food supply because of the firewalls we have in place. American consumers have every reason to continue to be confident in the safety of our beef".

When the first case in 2003 thirty countries banned beef imports from the US among which main trade partners such as Canada, Mexico and Japan.