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Canada Sends Shock Wave Across North American Economy with Mad Cow Case
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada reported its first case of mad cow disease in a decade on Tuesday, a potentially devastating revelation for the country's huge beef industry just weeks after its economy was damaged by the SARS threat. Personally, I think it is Chretien who brings all of this bad karma to our friends up north. A cow in Alberta, Canada's top cattle-producing province, tested positive for brain-wasting bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in a test taken after it was slaughtered last winter, officials said. Alberta, just a hop, skip and jumpt from the Montana border. "It was (detected) just a few days ago. The actual test was taken Jan. 31 from a cow in Fairview, Alberta," an official with the Canadian Beef Export Federation said. "It's just one isolated case of an eight-year-old cow." The animal with the latest case "did not enter the food chain" (or at least that's the story we're being told) and its northern Alberta herd will be slaughtered, as will any other found to be affected, Canadian Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief told a nationally televised news conference in the Alberta capital of Edmonton. Still, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman quickly slapped a temporary ban on beef imports from Canada because of the case. Alberta, where cattle ranching is ingrained in the culture, accounts for nearly 60 percent of Canada's beef production, providing C$3.8 billion ($2.8 million) in annual farm cash receipts. Last year, more than half a million live cattle were shipped to the United States, according to Alberta agriculture department statistics. The mad cow news sent shock waves across the North American economy. "It still remains to be seen how serious it is but the news is not good for Canada, without a doubt," said a currency trader at a major Canadian bank. "We're trading off the headlines." Some experts believe mad cow disease may have been spread by cows in Britain who were fed the remains of sheep contaminated with scrapie. Other scientists say the disease arose from a mutation in a cow in the 1970s. So far more than 80 people in Britain and Europe have died from the human variation of mad cow, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Posted by: ColoradoConservative 2003-05-20 |
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