Ninth confirmed BSE case in Canada

The animal died on a farm last week and tested positive for the disease. Its
carcass is under Canadian Food Inspection Agency control and no part of it
entered the human food or animal feed systems, the agency said Wednesday. The
agency did not reveal where the animal was found or how old it was. “Where
the animal is found at the time of its death is not as important as where it
lived in its first year of life,” said George Luterbach, the agency’s senior
veterinarian for Western Canada.

He said the agency is searching for
animals born within a year of the bull that may have been exposed to the same
feed source as the infected animal.

“These animals are removed, destroyed, tested and disposed
of in a manner that they do not enter the feed system,” Luterbach said. The
Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in a written statement, said the infected
bull may have been exposed to a very small amount of infectious material,
most likely during its first year of life.

The first case of mad cow disease confirmed in Canada was in 1993 in a
cow imported from Britain. That was it until 2003, when BSE was identified in an
Alberta cow. Since then, eight other cases have been identified, including the
bull identified on Wednesday.

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