by JIM ALGIE
Canada’s first confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) since 2011 has Canadian Food Inspection Agency investigators seeking details of the infected Alberta animal’s age and herd history, an agency statement said, Thursday.
“The investigation will focus on the feed supplied to the animal during the first year of its life,” the statement said. Identified through existing surveillance measures, the animal is described in the statement only as a “beef cow from Alberta.”
Further details of the animal’s history were not available, Friday morning, from a CFIA spokesperson. However, the agency did say no part of the diseased animal entered human food or animal feed systems.
As well, CFIA said the current case should not affect Canada’s current exports of cattle or beef. Canada remains a “controlled risk” nation for BSE under World Organization for Animal Health protocols.
Canada’s current status followed adoption in 2007 of enhanced surveillance measures and a ban on most animal-source proteins – including potentially infectious materials – from all animal feeds, pet foods and fertilizers. Until recently, CFIA had estimated Canada could seek reclassification to “negligible” risk status by the spring of 2016.
A check Friday morning of World Organization of Animal Health Internet documents showed no 2015 reports so far of BSE events for Canada. Known better by its acronym in French, Office International des Epizooties, the world organization or OIE, was established in 1924 to help manage animal-human diseases.
The most recent BSE event in OIE reporting as of Friday morning was a Jan. 29 report involving an aged cow in Norway. However, CFIA and world organization data bases do record monthly test results for Canada since 2003 when the first case of BSE in a native-born animal was reported in an aged Alberta cow.
Since then, CFIA fact sheets available online show a total of 16 positive BSE tests. Consequently, Thursday’s report should bring to 17 the number of confirmed BSE cases in Canada since 2003 when emergence of the disease restricted international trade in Canadian beef and livestock.
In addition to investigating individual details of the infected cow, CFIA’s current investigation is to “trace out” and destroy “all animals of equivalent risk” in order to test them for BSE, the agency’s Thursday statement said.
photo: Gerry Ritz
In a statement provided by press secretary Jeffrey English, federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz emphasized that CFIA surveillance confirmed “no part of the animal's carcass entered the human food or animal feed systems.”
"Following internationally recognized protocols, the CFIA is working with provincial and industry partners,” Ritz said. The agency “will update Canadians as more information is available," he said.
BSE is a progressive, fatal, neurological disease in cattle with suspected links to a human variant and spread by infectious agents known as prions. Canada is among 17 countries classified at “controlled risk” for the disease by OIE, including Mexico, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The United States maintains “negligible risk” status, world organization documents show. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on BSE identifies four cases in the United States since a widely-publicized outbreak in the U.K. which peaked in 1993 with as many as 1,000 cases weekly.
Both Canada and the United States maintain similar BSE surveillance systems and seek to eliminate possible infection of livestock through control of feed ingredients, particularly the use of meat and bone meal preparations. BF
Comments
If you want to know why so many US consumers favor COOL,one only needs to read this.
Of course it is all political but still for Canada to be lumped into the same status as the UK does not ooze confidence in this Country's red meat industry.
We are often in the US and I always check out meat counter & greenhouse produce and have yet too see any US or Canadian consumer really care about COOL. A lot of no name products are sold and you don't hear anybody questioning the Asian food safety. COOL was more about US producers thinking they could gain an advantage ,like A &W beef ads or Tim Hortons saying they want stall free pork. Think any of those execs. have ever been on a livestock farm . Politics and posturing gets in the way of the truth and common sense quite often-kg kimball
Actually a couple of years ago, we had our packing plant bring Tim Horton's exec's to our farm to see loose sows for themselves. They also went to another farm with sows in stalls...to see what that was like.
I believe it was after that that they made their commitment to loose sow raised pork.
They did do their homework, they did listen to their customers, they consulted with the industry...I don't see the problem.
Farmers should spend more time listening to the customers instead of trying to force them to buy what is offered.
If John Deere tried to tell me what I had to buy because they "know better", I would take my money and go elsewhere...probably the New Holland dealer.
D. Linton
I will stand by my comment that its all about posturing & trying too sell something unique more than humane or customer demands . I have been to your farm Dave and you showed us your dry sow barn when we bought your trailer decades ago and it works good for you and I respect that is the way you want too raise them but we have been in dry sow stalls since 1978 & have no interest in ever going back to pens . James Reesor had some real good points on his Better Farming article on RWF pork. Good producers always put the humane treatment of animals first. Stephen , I don't like too get into personal attacks but do you find fault with everybody and everything? I thought you were just anti SM.-kg kimball
When A&W makes its claims about hormone-free beef and when Tim Hortons wants it pork to be raised under "humane" conditions, it's because their focus groups, consumer surveys and even test-marketing exercises, have made it clear that these policies will result in increased sales.
In addition, it is my understanding that similar consumer research has revealed that a huge percentage of US consumers want to know if their food contains GMO ingredients (even when most of the people surveyed don't have a clue about what GMO is), want to know if their milk contains BST (even when, once again, most of the people surveyed don't have a clue about what BST is) and also want to know where their meat comes from (and/or how it is raised), if for no other reason than because they believe they have a right to know.
Therefore, when Canadian farmers are dismissive to executives who lack farm roots and/or blame politics and posturing for getting in the way of "common sense", these farmers ignore the "common sense truth" that food-labelling and other forms of segmented/differentiated marketing based on enhanced consumer knowledge about the products they are buying is what consumers on both sides of the border want.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton, ON
It appears that the only "posturing" being done is that which is being done by Mr. Kimball in an attempt to pooh-pooh what consumers want and what the supply chain is trying to deliver to them.
For example, in today's London Free Press, an article on the back page of one of the sections included data showing that, if my memory is correct, only about a quarter of US consumers believe GMO food is safe to eat and less than 40% believe foods treated with pesticides are safe to eat - and for primary agriculture to downplay and/or ignore those kind of numbers is "posturing" to the nth degree.
Or, in other words, when producers like Mr. Kimball claim they "have no interest" in doing something consumers clearly seem to want, they aren't going to get, or deserve, any sympathy when they fail.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
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