The Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed an eighth case of BSE Aug. 23 in a mature beef animal from Alberta, believed to be eight to 10 years old.
The latest case of BSE doesn’t seem to have caused much of a ripple in domestic cattle circles or with international customers.
Darcy Davis, chair of the Alberta Beef Producers, said the latest BSE case in the Canadian cattle herd is “not unexpected.”
“It shows our surveillance is working real well. We’re going well beyond the OIE (world animal health group) standards in our surveillance and it’s still showing a real low level.”
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Canadian officials have tested more than 117,500 cattle since BSE was discovered in a northern Alberta cow in 2003.
The latest animal was born around, or shortly after 1997, when the ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban was put in place. There have been 11 cases of BSE in North America, three in the United States and eight in Canada. Four of the eight Canadian cases were born after the 1997 feed ban.
George Luterbach, CFIA veterinarian, said the agency has begun to search for the animal’s birth farm to help establish the most critical period in its first year of life. Susceptibility to BSE drops substantially after an animal’s first year.
Davis said the in-depth surveillance and feed ban should give consumers confidence in the cattle industry and the meat market.
“The concern is more the reaction of our consumers in Canada and our international customers and most of them have said continue as we are as a controlled-risk country.”
American agriculture secretary Mike Johanns said the discovery of an eighth case of BSE in Canada would not affect trade.
“With the information currently available, we do not anticipate a change in the status of beef imports from Canada. While our risk assessment anticipated multiple cases of BSE, we are confident that the interlocking safeguards in place in both Canada and the U.S. are providing effective consumer protection,” said Johanns in a news release.
“USDA continues to work on the proposed rule to allow animals over 30 months of age from countries at minimal risk for BSE. We will incorporate epidemiological findings from this latest case into the current risk assessment to ensure that the conclusions we have drawn about the proposed rule’s effectiveness are still accurate,” said Johanns.
CFIA officials have concluded their investigation of a 50-month-old Jersey dairy cow from Alberta diagnosed with BSE on July 13.
They traced 172 animals and located 38 live ones. Most had gone to slaughter. Some of the remaining more valuable animals will be kept in quarantine to harvest the embryos or calves in an attempt to keep the genetics. BSE does not spread from mother to offspring or to embryos.
During the investigation of the records from the mills where feed was bought, CFIA found one batch of feed that may have been contaminated with prohibited material and is the likely source of BSE contamination, said Luterbach.
The records suggested “that all practices in regard to cross contamination were not followed.”
In the report published Aug. 24, investigators looked at two manufacturing facilities that had received prohibited material from the same rendering plant implicated in previous BSE investigations.
“Both facilities had procedures in place to comply with the 1997 feed ban. However a review of production records revealed that one of these facilities failed to document a flush of equipment used to pellet 2.08 tonnes of commercial 16 percent Heifer Grower ration.
“The equipment had previously been used to pellet a feed containing prohibited materials for non-ruminants. This entire load of commercial Heifer Grower ration was delivered to the index farm and used in the feeding of the index animal and others on the premises at the time,” said the report.
Luterbach said a possible contamination in one facility doesn’t mean there are systemic problems throughout the feed industry.
“This is one batch of feed in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of feed manufactured in Canada,” he said.
“We saw one batch of feed manufactured on a single day in which there was some indication that the flushing wasn’t properly done. Is it isolated? Is it general to that feed mill? That’s part of the investigation.”
A 2005 audit of feed systems in Canada found compliance is high. Davis said the incident shows how difficult it is to remove the infective agent from the feed system.
“It sounds like an isolated incident. It shows our systems are working and how we’re trying to mitigate the disease in the herd. It’s not a food safety issue. It’s a matter of how fast we can eliminate BSE from the national cow herd.
“We’re putting more measures in place with removing SRM (specified risk material) from meat and bone meal. It shows the industry’s commitment to try and eliminate it from the herd. It’s showing how hard it is to do that,” Davis said.
