A seventh confirmed case of BSE is frustrating news for livestock owners here and beyond Canada’s borders.
While some observers said the discovery of BSE in a 50-month-old dairy cow from Alberta should not affect trade, news of the latest case concerned Mexican sheep producer Rodrigo Guiterez and American Simmental breeder Roy Phillips.
Guiterez and Phillips were touring Canada and checking out purebred genetics but they realized it could be some time before they could import live Canadian animals.
Guiterez owns about 12,000 ewes and used to import Canadian purebred sheep on a regular basis.
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“After the last mad cow last week, it’ll be two years (before trade resumes),” he said. “If we were expecting the border to open, forget it.”
Guiterez can import semen and embryos but collection is expensive and he must wait for the animals to be born.
“It takes me two years to have a sire or a dam ready to work.”
Phillips, who raises cattle in Georgia, owns about a dozen Simmentals in Canada. He would prefer to see them walking on his farm.
“It is a big deal because my costs in Canada are three times what they would be in the United States,” he said referring to the expense of boarding cattle in Canada.
“Everybody has their own opinion but there should never have been a closed border. Anybody with any common sense would automatically know any disease Canada would have, the U.S. has it too,” he said.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has isolated the Alberta farm that was home to the recently diagnosed cow. Officials are tracing other cattle born 12 months before and 12 months after the infected cow and those will be tested.
A full feed investigation is also under way. The feed investigation is of particular interest because the cow was born after the 1997 ruminant feed ban.
Trading partners are telling Canada they will wait for the outcome of the investigation, said Dennis Laycraft, executive vice president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
“There is a standard response: ‘we’ll wait until the investigation is completed,’ ” he said.
Scientists from the United States Department of Agriculture are in Canada to participate in the investigation although during the summer meeting of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, concerns did not appear high over the age of the most recent case, said Laycraft.
Members were more interested in the relaxation of bluetongue regulations to allow year-round shipments of cattle to Canada as well as the prohibition order to allow older animals into the country. The suspension of beef trade with Japan also figured high on the agenda.
“A lot of their attention was really on Asia. They are very frustrated with the number of Asian markets where they have lost access. The issues these countries are asking for are simply not based on international standards,” he said.
The United States has not introduced an enhanced feed ban similar to what Canada announced in June, something trading partners wanted. The food and drug administration rule is expected by the end of this year or early 2007 because it is still out for consultation.
Nevertheless, as more is understood about BSE, more countries recognize that a number of animals born after the prohibition will test positive for BSE. The same situation occurred in Europe after a full feed ban was implemented there.
The confirmation of BSE in a cow born after feed restrictions were implemented has yet to be explained but new information indicates that the disease can be acquired in a piece of feed the size of fleck of pepper, said Laycraft.
“There are a number of possibilities around this.”
Perhaps residual feed remained in the mill or on the farm where small bits were caught in troughs or augers. It could have come from a plant that handled feed for a number of different species and equipment may have been improperly cleaned.
“Nowadays with the new knowledge they wash the trucks out so what happened in 2002 is different than our practices today as we learn more and more about the amount of (infective) material,” Laycraft said.
R-CALF said the latest case is a good reason to delay the next minimal risk rule for trade in older animals.
The Montana-based group argues that Canada does not test enough and with more cases occurring, there appears to be a higher risk of disease.
“USDA must now acknowledge that the principal assumptions used to support its Final Rule are no longer valid and that much more needs to be done to mitigate the heightened BSE risks presented by Canadian beef and cattle,” said R-CALF president Chuck Kiker in a written statement.
