The Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed on Wednesday a new case of mad cow disease in Alberta.
It is Canada's fifth case in 2006 and the eighth since 2003, when the disease was first found in this country, officials said.
I continue to find it interesting that Canada has such a problem with BSE and in the US, with a much larger herd, we have only had a couple of native cases. I still think COOL here in the US would help with this situation. Let the consumer decide if they want to limit their beef consumption to one country or just buy meat from wherever. I personally think the typical consumer only cares about the price of beef and not considerations such as where it's from or disease that they will most likely not contract.
This will sure get RCALF going again on this BSE/Canada issue again. Let's check it out.
BSE Confirmed in Alberta Beef Cow
Today the Canadian government confirmed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in another Alberta beef cow, making this the ninth BSE-positive animal of Canadian origin.
“R-CALF has been saying all along that it appears the prevalence of BSE in Canada is a lot higher than anybody anticipated,” said R-CALF USA President and Region V Director Chuck Kiker. “This raises a tremendous amount of concern, especially in light of the fact that it does not appear Canada’s meat and bone meal ban, or feed ban, was effective.
“With numerous cases of BSE in older Canadian cows, and the four cases in animals born after Canada’s 1997 feed ban, Canada could continue to discover BSE cases for years to come,” he added.
I sure wish R-CALF would put this kind of effort into stopping our government from forcing NAIS down our throats or enforcing the Packers and Stockyards act to prevent the meat packers from screwing the farmers and ranchers. But they feel the BSE/Canada issue trumps all. Awful short sighted if you ask me. They need to open their eyes to other problems.
We must open our eyes and see that modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with the lives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and out of it. Franklin D. Roosevelt
