MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mad-cow disease confirmed in Canada

The Canadian government said Sunday that it has confirmed a case of mad-cow disease in a cow in British Columbia.

The dairy cow did not enter human or animal feed chains, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a written statement.

The 6-year-old dairy cow was identified on a Fraser Valley farm through a national surveillance program for mad-cow disease.

Mad-cow disease is also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a degenerative disease of the central nervous system of cattle. There is no cure and no test to determine whether it exists in live animals or in muscle tissue, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"This finding does not affect the safety of Canadian beef," the agency said Sunday in a written statement. "Tissues in which BSE is known to concentrate in infected animals are removed from all cattle slaughtered in Canada for domestic and international human consumption."

Investigators have identified the animal's date and location of birth in order to trace potential sources of infection, which include feed the animal may have eaten early in its life, when cattle are most susceptible to the disease.

Though regulations were enacted during the 1990s banning the feeding to cows of ruminant material that could be contaminated with BSE, "an enhanced feed ban would accelerate the eradication of BSE in Canada," the government said Sunday.

"Accordingly, the CFIA has published proposed regulatory amendments, and following extensive consultations, is now in the process of finalizing their content."

The national surveillance program has detected five BSE-infected animals since it was put in place in 2003. The program targets cattle most at risk, and since its inception has tested more than 100,000 animals.

Last month, Alabama officials announced the third case of mad-cow disease in the United States.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said he would dispatch a USDA animal health expert to Canada Monday.

"Information gathered through this investigation will help us to determine what, if any, impact this should have on our beef and live cattle trade with Canada," he said. "Based on the information currently available, I do not anticipate a change in the status of our trade."

Canada's trade with the United States in cows younger than 30 months, as well as meat, resumed in July 2005 because the younger cows are thought to have a lower disease risk, The Associated Press reported.

In humans, eating infected tissue from cows has been linked to a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare but fatal degenerative disease blamed for the deaths of 150 people in Britain, where there was an outbreak in the 1980s and 1990s.