Australia bans Canadian cattle imports over mad cow fears

Yesterday’s announcement of the first known case in a decade of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in North America, which was confirmed by a British laboratory, had authorities in cattle-producing countries around the world scrambling to track down any links with Canadian beef.

Australia imports only breeding cattle from Canada and quarantine officials moved quickly to find them, said Tim Langmead, a spokesman for federal agriculture minister Warren Truss.

“They have all been traced, we know where they are and it is likely they will be placed under lifetime quarantine,” said Langmead. “We will obviously suspend any further imports of live breeder cattle from Canada.”

Langmead was not able to say how many breeder cattle had been traced or the number imported annually. He said Australia exported beef and beef products to Canada but did not buy any cattle meat products from there that could be susceptible to the disease.

New Zealand was also tracing Canadian cattle imports.

Canadian agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief told a news conference in Edmonton that the infected cow, an eight-year-old from a farm in northern Alberta, was slaughtered on January 31 because it was believed to have pneumonia.

He stressed the diseased animal never reached human or animal consumption, the known method of spreading the infection. It cannot be transmitted between live animals.

The illness, which ravaged Britain and the rest of Europe’s cattle industry in 2001, is thought to cause the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans who eat infected meat.

Meanwhile, the Canadian announcement left restaurant and food industries trying to reassure consumers they had nothing to fear.

“This one confirmed cow has no connection with McDonald’s Canada,” said a statement by the hamburger restaurant chain. Other popular outlets issued similar assurances that their food was safe.