Could Mad Cow Be In Canada Already?
CBC's The National
February 21, 2001
PETER MANSBRIDGE: There's no word yet on when, or if, Canada will be lifting its ban on Brazilian beef. Health inspectors worried about mad cow disease are still reviewing information they gathered last week on a trip to Brazil. Meantime, there are suggestions tonight, those inspectors should be looking a little closer to home. As Kelly Crowe reports, there's a slight chance mad cow is already here.
KELLY CROWE (Reporter): These scientists are on the lookout for mad cow disease. This is the only way to find it, by removing an animal's brain, and looking at the tissue. Right now, Canadian scientists routinely check the brains of any animal that shows signs of neurological disease. But what about the animals that don't show any signs of being sick? So, could we be missing some right now?
DAVID WESTAWAY (Scientist, University of Toronto): It's conceivable.
CROWE: That's because it can take years for the cow to show symptoms, like the loss of muscle control, captured here in one of the few recorded images of an infected cow. But cows that look healthy can also have the disease, and some fear those animals could slip into the food chain.
WESTAWAY: The nasty thing about the disease is the latency period is long, and you have to factor this into your policies.
CROWE: Policies that some say should include more testing. Since 1992, twenty million cattle have been slaughtered for food in Canada, but scientists have only tested forty-five hundred brains because those cattle showed signs of disease. All tests were negative. Canadian officials say that's enough to prove the disease is not in Canada, at least not yet.
CLAUDE LAVIGNE (Canadian Food Inspection Agency): If that disease was in our cattle population at this time, we would find it right now with the surveillance we're doing.
CROWE: But can Canada afford to be that confident, especially now that the World Health Organization is warning that mad cow disease might have already gone global? It's this animal feed that has international officials worried. It's called meat and bone meal. It's made out of animal carcasses, including cattle. Experts believe meat and bone meal spread mad cow disease in Britain, when infected cows were ground up and fed back to other cows. And now the UN is worried that infected meat and bone meal has been exported from Britain all over the world. Canadian officials say none of the infected feed came here, but Canada did import one infected cow in the middle of the British outbreak. It was destroyed back in 1993 along with more than four hundred other British imports. Even so, a report by the European Union's scientific committee says a few imported British cattle managed to slip in to the Canadian system. The report says, "eleven imported cattle that were found to be carrying a risk of being infected entered the Canadian food or feed chain" creating what the report calls a slight risk that they might have been processed in to cattle feed, and fed back to cattle. Something that was still allowed in Canada as late as 1997. Canadian officials disagree with the report, saying there's no chance of mad cow disease here. Still, they've restricted the use of meat and bone meal, and the rendering industry is now forced, by law, to keep cattle out of cattle feed. It's key to preventing mad cow from spreading if it ever shows up. Though, already in the US, there have been widespread violations. Canadian officials say the ban is working here.
LAVIGNE: The reports are that this program is going well at this time.
CROWE: Still, with so much at stake, critics say Canada should be testing not just animals that show signs of disease, but randomly testing even healthy looking animals. Scientists say it's the only way to be certain Canada is really free of mad cow disease. Kelly Crowe, CBC News, Toronto.
MANSBRIDGE: Well, tomorrow night, Kelly continues her look at mad cow disease with the question, what kind of products containing bovine ingredients got into Canada before the walls went up?