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Mad cow again! Action needed now
Paula Simons, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Thursday, January 26, 2006
Dear Stephen,
I know you were busy Monday, winning an election and all. But there's an important matter I want to bring to your prime ministerial attention. If you want to do Alberta beef producers and Alberta beef consumers a big favour, start by putting a comprehensive mad cow prevention policy at the top of your national "to do" list.
On Monday, while Canadians went to the polls, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced another cow had tested positive for BSE: bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Our latest mad cow was a 69-month-old breeding heifer, a Holstein-Hereford cross, from somewhere in north-central Alberta. That's the fifth infected Canadian-born cow that's turned up, and the fifth born and raised in this general area.
Given how many, many more cattle we test for BSE these days, it was only to be expected that we would find a few more sick animals. Back before we found our first mad cow in June of 2003, Alberta was only testing 150 to 200 specimens a year. Last year, Canada tested 57,766 cattle. Of those 30,536, or 53 per cent, were from Alberta. All were high-risk animals from the so-called 4D group: dead, distressed, diseased or downers.
With that massive increase in surveillance, finding one more positive sample should be no surprise. Indeed, it would scarcely be cause for alarm.
There's just one problem.
This particular cow was only six years old. She was born in April 2000, three years after Canada instituted the feed ban that was supposed to prevent the spread of mad cow disease. That ban completely forbade the use of rendered cows, sheep, elk and other ruminants in cattle feed. The leading scientific thinking on BSE says that's how cows get prion disease -- by eating rendered protein from infected animals.
All the other sick cows we've found were either born before the ban or just after it came into effect.
So how did this heifer get infected? So far, no one knows.
It's a troubling question -- with even more troubling answers.
Are we to believe some farmer had contaminated three-year-old feed left over and that he fed it to his stock in defiance or ignorance of the law?
Or perhaps our existing national feed ban isn't stringent enough.
Back in 1997, when we instituted the feed ban, we naively believed that our national herd was actually BSE-free. The ban was only thought to be a precautionary measure. Now, we know we were wrong. We know our herd is infected, if only at a low level. Yet we've never toughened our feed ban to deal with that new reality.
We still allow feed mills to turn cattle, sheep and other ruminants into rations for swine and poultry. That leaves the possibility that cattle feed can be contaminated in two ways. Farmers could mix up feed on the farm. Or feed mills can cross-contaminate their product at the factory. Either way, it only takes a tiny speck of infected material -- .001 of a gram -- to make a cow fatally ill. That's why rendering just one diseased animal into food can lead to an exponential increase in infections.
In July 2004, Paul Martin's government announced it would improve Canada's feed ban. The CFIA unveiled plans to ban all dead and downer ruminants -- cattle, sheep, bison, elk, llamas and the like -- from all animal feed.
The new rules would still have allowed apparently healthy ruminants to be rendered for pig and poultry feed. However, renderers and feed mill operators would have been required to remove all the "specified risk materials" -- the parts of the cow most likely to contain prions, the infectious, protein-warping particles that cause BSE.
Those risky bits include all brain and spinal cord material, as well as eyeballs, tonsils and parts of the small intestine. We already ban them from beef meant for human consumption. Banning them from all animal feed would dramatically lower the risk of accidental cross-contamination.
Yet here we are in January 2006 and the new rules are still not in force.
Instead, we've had 18 months of "discussion" and "stakeholder consultations" and delicate federal-provincial negotiations. Meanwhile, who knows how much more feed could have been contaminated or how many more cows could have become infected?
Stephen, you say you're going to put Alberta's interests on the national agenda. Keeping Alberta's beef exports moving, breaking down the trade barriers that still remain is vital to our economy.
But we need national leadership to keep our herd healthy and to show our international trading partners we take BSE seriously.
True, a stricter feed ban will create major inconveniences and expenses for the rendering and feed industries, and for farmers. But the costs and consequences of not addressing the gaps in our feed rules are too great to ignore.
No one should panic over the discovery of one more sick cow. The surveillance system worked perfectly. The animal was quickly identified, tested and destroyed, and kept out of the human and animal food chain.
But if we shouldn't panic, neither should we shrug. This election-day announcement should be a wake-up call for our new prime minister. Mr. Harper, please cut through the red tape and give us an effective feed ban, one that keeps Canadian cattle, Canadian export markets and Canadian consumers safe.
[email protected]
© The Edmonton Journal 2006
Paula Simons, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Thursday, January 26, 2006
Dear Stephen,
I know you were busy Monday, winning an election and all. But there's an important matter I want to bring to your prime ministerial attention. If you want to do Alberta beef producers and Alberta beef consumers a big favour, start by putting a comprehensive mad cow prevention policy at the top of your national "to do" list.
On Monday, while Canadians went to the polls, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced another cow had tested positive for BSE: bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Our latest mad cow was a 69-month-old breeding heifer, a Holstein-Hereford cross, from somewhere in north-central Alberta. That's the fifth infected Canadian-born cow that's turned up, and the fifth born and raised in this general area.
Given how many, many more cattle we test for BSE these days, it was only to be expected that we would find a few more sick animals. Back before we found our first mad cow in June of 2003, Alberta was only testing 150 to 200 specimens a year. Last year, Canada tested 57,766 cattle. Of those 30,536, or 53 per cent, were from Alberta. All were high-risk animals from the so-called 4D group: dead, distressed, diseased or downers.
With that massive increase in surveillance, finding one more positive sample should be no surprise. Indeed, it would scarcely be cause for alarm.
There's just one problem.
This particular cow was only six years old. She was born in April 2000, three years after Canada instituted the feed ban that was supposed to prevent the spread of mad cow disease. That ban completely forbade the use of rendered cows, sheep, elk and other ruminants in cattle feed. The leading scientific thinking on BSE says that's how cows get prion disease -- by eating rendered protein from infected animals.
All the other sick cows we've found were either born before the ban or just after it came into effect.
So how did this heifer get infected? So far, no one knows.
It's a troubling question -- with even more troubling answers.
Are we to believe some farmer had contaminated three-year-old feed left over and that he fed it to his stock in defiance or ignorance of the law?
Or perhaps our existing national feed ban isn't stringent enough.
Back in 1997, when we instituted the feed ban, we naively believed that our national herd was actually BSE-free. The ban was only thought to be a precautionary measure. Now, we know we were wrong. We know our herd is infected, if only at a low level. Yet we've never toughened our feed ban to deal with that new reality.
We still allow feed mills to turn cattle, sheep and other ruminants into rations for swine and poultry. That leaves the possibility that cattle feed can be contaminated in two ways. Farmers could mix up feed on the farm. Or feed mills can cross-contaminate their product at the factory. Either way, it only takes a tiny speck of infected material -- .001 of a gram -- to make a cow fatally ill. That's why rendering just one diseased animal into food can lead to an exponential increase in infections.
In July 2004, Paul Martin's government announced it would improve Canada's feed ban. The CFIA unveiled plans to ban all dead and downer ruminants -- cattle, sheep, bison, elk, llamas and the like -- from all animal feed.
The new rules would still have allowed apparently healthy ruminants to be rendered for pig and poultry feed. However, renderers and feed mill operators would have been required to remove all the "specified risk materials" -- the parts of the cow most likely to contain prions, the infectious, protein-warping particles that cause BSE.
Those risky bits include all brain and spinal cord material, as well as eyeballs, tonsils and parts of the small intestine. We already ban them from beef meant for human consumption. Banning them from all animal feed would dramatically lower the risk of accidental cross-contamination.
Yet here we are in January 2006 and the new rules are still not in force.
Instead, we've had 18 months of "discussion" and "stakeholder consultations" and delicate federal-provincial negotiations. Meanwhile, who knows how much more feed could have been contaminated or how many more cows could have become infected?
Stephen, you say you're going to put Alberta's interests on the national agenda. Keeping Alberta's beef exports moving, breaking down the trade barriers that still remain is vital to our economy.
But we need national leadership to keep our herd healthy and to show our international trading partners we take BSE seriously.
True, a stricter feed ban will create major inconveniences and expenses for the rendering and feed industries, and for farmers. But the costs and consequences of not addressing the gaps in our feed rules are too great to ignore.
No one should panic over the discovery of one more sick cow. The surveillance system worked perfectly. The animal was quickly identified, tested and destroyed, and kept out of the human and animal food chain.
But if we shouldn't panic, neither should we shrug. This election-day announcement should be a wake-up call for our new prime minister. Mr. Harper, please cut through the red tape and give us an effective feed ban, one that keeps Canadian cattle, Canadian export markets and Canadian consumers safe.
[email protected]
© The Edmonton Journal 2006