MAD COW DISEASE

Canada Confirms New Case of Mad Cow Authorities confirmed on Tuesday another case of mad cow disease in the western province of Alberta -- the second animal found to have the deadly brain-wasting disease in Canada since U.S. officials announced last month they would resume the cross-border cattle trade in March. Canadian officials said no part of the cow -- the third case of the disease ever found in Canada -- has entered the human or animal feed system. But the announcement may strengthen the position of a group of U.S. cattlemen who have sued to block the lifting of the ban. The cattlemen say allowing the trade will hurt U.S. producers and put consumers at risk. U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said Tuesday they are sending a team to Canada to evaluate the latest mad cow case before deciding whether to change their plan to resume imports....
Two Mad Cows in 10 Days A Coincidence - Canada Chief Vet Finding two cases of mad cow disease in 10 days is a coincidence and does not indicate a growing problem with bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Canada, the country's chief veterinarian said Tuesday. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed a case of brain-wasting BSE in an Alberta dairy cow on Jan. 2, and announced Tuesday it had found another from an unrelated Alberta purebred beef farm. "The frequency with which the last two cases has been detected is indicative of random occurrence," Brian Evans told reporters. Evans said officials expected to unearth an additional small number of cases as they stepped up testing for the disease after finding the country's first home-grown case in May 2003....
U.S. Reviews Import Plan as Canada Has 3rd BSE Case The U.S. will review a government plan to renew cattle imports from Canada, where officials today confirmed the nation's third case of mad cow disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will send a technical team to Canada to evaluate the circumstances surrounding Canada's recent mad cow cases, Ron DeHaven, the chief of USDA's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, said today in an e-mailed statement. ``The result of our investigation and analysis will be used to evaluate appropriate next steps'' for the U.S. plan to resume imports in March, DeHaven said....
Cattle Prices Rise as U.S. Seen Delaying Canadian Import Plan Cattle prices in Chicago rose to a 13- month high on speculation that the U.S. will withdraw a plan to resume imports of beef and live cattle from Canada because of a new case of mad cow disease. Canada, which supplied 5 percent of the cattle slaughtered in the U.S. in 2002, today disclosed a third case of the disease since May 2003. The U.S. said last week it plans to resume Canadian imports after a 19-month ban that reduced supplies available to beef producers such as Tyson Foods Inc. ``The odds are increasing with a possible new case of mad cow disease in Canada that the U.S. will at least delay opening the border to Canadian cattle,'' said Andy Gottschalk, a livestock analyst for HedgersEdge.com LLC in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Cattle futures for February delivery rose 1.325 cents, or 1.5 percent, to 91.875 cents a pound on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the highest closing price for a most-active contract since Dec. 3, 2003....
North Dakotans want border kept closed after new mad cow case North Dakota officials on Tuesday called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reconsider its decision to reopen the border to Canadian beef, after the second confirmed case of mad cow disease in the province of Alberta this year. Wade Moser, executive vice president of the North Dakota Stockmen's Association, said ranchers have little faith that USDA is doing everything possible to keep the disease out of the United States. "It's too bad that we can't trust our own government," he said....
U.S. beef producers having second thoughts about supporting border opening U.S. beef producers were having second thoughts about supporting a reopening of the border to Canadian cattle Tuesday after word of a third mad cow case north of the border. And U.S. agriculture officials said they are sending a technical team to Canada to investigate the latest case before saying whether they'll continue their support of resuming the cattle trade. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association demanded an investigation into whether Canada is complying with a feed ban that was supposed to prevent the spread of the disease. "Once the questions concerning Canada's compliance with its BSE firewalls have been adequately answered, NCBA members will consider their position on the Canadian rule and efforts to reopen the border," president Jan Lyons said in a release. "We are very, very concerned with the age of this animal and compliance with the feed ban," said association spokesman Karen Batra. "Our position on reopening the border - we've got some concerns on that." Batra said the group's members will insist the U.S. government rethink its plan to reopen the border in March if they don't have the answers they're looking for by then....
France Says Mad Cow Cases Fall Again in 2004 France said on Tuesday the number of confirmed mad cow cases in the country in 2004 fell more than 60 percent to 54 from a year earlier following tests on some 2.9 million cattle. Following the mad cow epidemic in Britain in the 1990s, mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), spread to France causing a national crisis in 2000, prompting mass culls, beef-on-the-bone bans and extra tests on cattle. Nine people have been diagnosed in France with vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease), the human form of BSE and six have died. In Britain more than 140 people have died of the disease. The French farm ministry said of the 54 BSE cases last year, eight were detected in the framework of a national surveillance system, 29 under the animals at risk programme and 17 from the compulsory screening of older cattle at slaughterhouses. Confirmed cases stood at 137 in 2003, 239 in 2002 and 274 in 2001, it added in a statement....
Major human mad cow epidemic unlikely A major epidemic of the human form of mad cow disease is unlikely, scientists say. Estimates of how many people are likely to develop the fatal brain disease from eating meat contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) have varied widely. But researchers at Imperial College London said on Wednesday they believed only about 70 future cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) would be diagnosed in the country. "We think that the epidemic will be quite small in terms of cases that have arisen from consumption of beef," said epidemiologist Dr Azra Ghani. Because of the long incubation period, which scientists estimate could be from 10 to 20 years, it has been difficult to predict how many cases of vCJD there will be. Up to November 1 last year, 146 people had died from definitive or probable vCJD in Britain, the Department of Health says....