A six-year-old dairy cow from Alberta has been confirmed with BSE, the country’s 18 case of the fatal brain wasting disease.
It’s the first confirmed case of BSE in Canada in almost a year and was confirmed Feb. 18 through the country’s national BSE surveillance system.
Officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the birth farm has been identified and the age and location of the infected animal are consistent with previous cases detected in Canada.
Dr. Gerald Hauer, Alberta’s chief provincial veterinarian said the discovery of the animal after the feed ban is consistent with what happens in other countries.
“It’s not totally unexpected. It’s not outside of what we would expect to see,” he said.
The case will be reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health, but should not impact Canada’s status as a “controlled BSE risk” country and should not impact exports of Canadian beef or cattle.
No part of the animal’s carcass entered the human food or animal feed systems.
In 1997, Canada prohibited the feeding of most protein materials from mammals to ruminant animals. After BSE was discovered in a northern Alberta cow in 2003 and other subsequent cases, an enhanced feed ban was put in place in 2007.
The enhanced feed ban was designed to eliminate the potential contamination of feed by removing the specified risk material, or areas of the animals that could contaminate animal feed, pet food or fertilizer.
More than 313,000 cattle have been tested since BSE was first detected in 2003.
