The cow at the centre of Canada’s bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis was ground up, steam-cooked and made into feed that was sold to three British Columbia farms now quarantined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
“We are investigating the rendered material that came from that cow,” said Cheryl James, veterinary epidemiologist with the CFIA.
Renderers have safeguards to deal with this kind of situation, but one industry observer said the BSE-infected cow should never have ended up in that system in the first place.
“There is a shortcoming there,” said Erasmus Okine, associate professor of animal nutrition at the University of Alberta.
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Cattle with “named diseases” such as BSE or foot-and-mouth are not supposed to be rendered for feed, which is an integral component of Canada’s food safety system.
“This particular animal got through because the diagnosis was not BSE initially,” Okine said.
The cow was originally diagnosed with pneumonia at the slaughter plant, and Okine said it took the CFIA too long to come up with the proper diagnosis. By that time the cow had been rendered.
James said the animal did not display the “classical signs” of BSE. Its head was only sent to the CFIA as part of a routine sampling procedure, which is why the carcass was allowed to be rendered.
“Certainly we would prefer it didn’t go into the rendering system, but that’s the reason we have the safeguards within the rendering and the feed system,” she said.
A senior official with Western Canada’s only independent rendering company said there is no reason to panic, because Canada was prepared for an incident like this.
“We assume that everything is infected,” said Barry Glotman, president of West Coast Reduction Ltd., which operates five rendering plants in the West.
James concurs the system has been prepared ever since a feed ban was introduced in 1997.
“Ruminant meat and bone meal cannot be fed back to any other ruminant animal,” she said.
To ensure that is the case, rendering plants are required to have a licence and are inspected annually by the CFIA, which looks for three things:
- Plants that produce feed for cattle must be able to prove there is no potential for cross-contamination with feed produced for non-ruminant animals such as chickens and pigs, which may contain cattle remnants.
- Plants must produce records to show they are keeping track of where raw material was bought and where end product was shipped.
- Plants must clearly label product that is banned from being ruminant feed.
“It’s a pretty in-depth inspection that they go through,” said James, adding renderers are well aware of the importance of complying with those regulations.
“It’s in their best interest to ensure that the system is secure,” she said.
But enforcement of the feed ban becomes less stringent once the protein meal leaves the rendering plants.
“On the farm, things are not as controlled as they are in feed mills. That’s why they need to quarantine those farms and have a good look at the way they do things,” James said.
“That’s basically what they are concerned about – is there any potential for some of that meat and bone meal to have made its way into ruminant feed?”
The quarantine on the three B.C. farms, which collectively have fewer than 50 cattle, will be lifted if it is determined they followed the rules.
James said the 192 cattle in the herd where the infected cow was found have been destroyed. Initial tests have shown that none of them had BSE.
Arrangements have been made to render the herd, but the end product will not be used in the feed chain.
“What remains out of the rendering process will be incinerated or land-filled,” James said.
As of May 26, the feed investigation had been expanded to include 10 feed mills and 200 farms that may have received feed from those mills.
At a special cabinet meeting May 26, Alberta premier Ralph Klein said it was suggested that no sick cow be rendered.
The government is studying the proposal.
