MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mad cow cases in Canada and Japan

Two new cases of mad cow disease were confirmed in leading world markets: Canada and Japan. A dairy cow in Alberta tested positive for mad cow disease, officials confirmed Monday and Japanese authorities reported a similar situation with a 5 year cow which died in a Hokkaido dairy farm.

This is Canada's fourth home-grown case of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, BSE, and for Japan the 22nd case admitted Monday the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in an official release.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said a six-year-old Holstein-Hereford cow from a dairy farm in Alberta, the western province that concentrates most of the country's cattle industry, had tested positive for mad cow disease.

"The animal was detected on the farm where it was born and no part of this animal entered the food for human consumption or feed for animal consumption purposes," Brian Evans, the agency's chief veterinarian, told a news conference.

Three other cases of the mad cow disease, which has a human variant, have been traced to Canada, the first in May 2003. United States then slapped a two year ban on Canadian cattle and beef, with devastating impact for Canadian farmers who send over a million head of live cattle a year.

By the time the U.S. Department of Agriculture reopened the border to animals under the age of 30 months in mid-2005, the industry had lost an estimated 6 billion US dollars.

But the US is dealing with its own cattle trade problems. Japan slapped a ban on imports last week after spinal material, believed to carry a risk of causing the human form of the disease, was found in a shipment of U.S. meat. It is not yet known when that ban could be lifted, Japan's agriculture minister said on Monday.

In Japan the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said that the 5 year 4 month old cow that died last week on a Hokkaido farm had mad cow disease. The carcass of the female Holstein cow that died in the Hokkaido town of Betsukai will be incinerated and not enter the market, the ministry said.

The cow was born in September 2000, before the 2001 implementation of a ban on meat-and-bone meal suspected of being a cause of the BSE disease. The cow tested positive in a series of screenings at a meat inspection institution in Hokkaido.