The ho hum reaction to Canada’s latest case of BSE shows the country is correctly managing the disease, says the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
“The big concern is how people react and people seem to be pretty calm about this,” said John Masswohl, the association’s director of government and international relations in Ottawa.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency notified the CCA and other industry organizations last month after it confirmed that a 77-month-old dairy cow from Alberta had the fatal brain wasting disease. It was Canada’s 18th case.
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Masswohl said he then notified officials in Washington and other U.S. state cattle organizations.
“Their reaction was, ‘thanks for letting us know,’ ” said Masswohl, who also posted the news on his Twitter account to little reaction.
Masswohl said the industry never likes to find new BSE cases, but it’s comforting that the cases are becoming less common.
The last reported case was February 2010.
Officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the birth farm of the latest case has been identified and the age and location of the infected animal are consistent with previous cases detected in Canada.
No part of the animal’s carcass entered the human food or animal feed chains.
Dr. Gerald Hauer, Alberta’s chief provincial veterinarian, said the discovery of BSE in an animal that was born 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.”
BSE in Canada
•BSE is a fatal disease of the nervous system of cattle
•It is included in the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, which includes scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans
•Exact cause is not know, but it is associated with the presence of an abnormal protein called a prion. There is no treatment or cure
•First domestic case was found in Canada in 2003
