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Blame Canada!
Haha, apparently the cow that has been causing a stir with mad cow disease in the US has been traced to have been born in Canada.
| quote: | Taken from CNN.com
Officials tracking whereabouts of 81 other animals in herd
Tuesday, December 30, 2003 Posted: 6:50 AM EST (1150 GMT)
A number of nations have banned U.S. beef imports since the case was announced last week.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A cow slaughtered in Washington state may have contracted mad cow disease months before the United States and Canada banned the use of brain and spinal cord tissue in cattle feed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday.
The cow's owner checked his records and determined the cow was born in April 1997, two years earlier than U.S. officials originally believed, said Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian.
In August 1997, the United States and Canada banned the use of brains and spinal cords, the tissues that carry the disease, in animal feed. But authorities have acknowledged that not all cattle owners follow the rules.
"It is a likely explanation as to how this animal would have become infected," DeHaven told reporters.
Mad cow disease, known to scientists as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is a brain-wasting disease that is usually transmitted to cows via contaminated feed and has an incubation period in animals of four to six years.
DeHaven added, "This is the primary, if not the only, means which BSE is spread from animal to animal."
In 1996, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was detected in humans and linked to the disease in animals. Eating contaminated meat and cattle products is presumed to be the cause.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture awaits DNA samples from the cow to confirm the animal originated in Canada, DeHaven said earlier Monday.
Locating the cow's birth herd will allow them to track down the herd's other cows to see if they might have eaten the same contaminated feed, DeHaven told CNN.
"The birth herd is the likely location where the animal became infected," DeHaven said.
"We'll want to know what feed that animal had been fed, and even more importantly what other animals were on the farm at that same time that might have consumed the same feed and where are they now?"
DeHaven said investigators hope to use the stricken cow's DNA samples to confirm their preliminary determination that the animal entered the United States from the Canadian province of Alberta in 2001 with a herd of 81 cows. Testing also will trace the history of those other cows. Earlier officials said 73 cows from the herd were being traced.
Investigators have matched the cow's ear tag to a Canadian herd, but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it was unclear that the cow was the same one that became sick, or even that the infected animal had come from Canada.
DeHaven denied there was any disagreement between U.S. and Canadian officials on the matter.
See the full story at: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/29/mad.cow/index.html |
You guys didn't have a very lucky year with SARs, the big blackout and now this. Yet another instance of "Blame Canada".
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It's not that complex people...
