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More mad cow-linked herds under quarantine
EDMONTON, Canada (CNN) -- Canadian food inspectors have quarantined seven herds of cattle believed connected to a case of mad cow disease and will likely add two more herds later Thursday, a government spokesman said. Dr. Claude Lavigne, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said there was "a distinct possibility" more herds could be added to the quarantine list. "We are focusing on confirmation of the cow's birthplace and the history of feeding practices and sources of feed for this cow," he said, adding that officials had narrowed the cow's birthplace to two possibilities. The quarantined and soon-to-be-quarantined herds include five where the cow had been housed, three where the cow's offspring had been housed and the original herd, where the cow was when it was killed. Two of the herds are in Saskatchewan and seven are in Alberta. Lavigne said the cattle in the herd where the infected cow was found were euthanized and tested to determine whether they too were infected. The results will be available soon. Lavigne said he was pleased with Canada's food inspection systems, which caught the infected cow before it was sent for human consumption. The Canadian cow attracted attention at the slaughterhouse because it looked ill, said Dr. Debbie Barr, a veterinarian with Canada's food inspection agency. Officials said they believed they had successfully contained the infection. Mexico, Japan and South Korea Wednesday joined the United States -- Canada's top beef customer -- in temporarily banning Canadian beef. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, the scientific name for "mad cow," is a progressive, fatal disease of the nervous system of cattle. No U.S. cows have tested positive for the disease, which was first recognized in the United Kingdom in 1986. The fatal brain-wasting disease is believed to be spread through contaminated cattle food and cannot be passed from cow to cow. A human disease -- variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) -- was first identified in 1996 and linked to eating mad cow-contaminated meat and cattle products. Canada's first case of BSE occurred in 1993 in a cow that had been imported in 1987 from Britain. The carcass and the herd that the cow came from were destroyed. Since 1990, Canada, the world's fourth-largest exporter of beef, has not allowed the import of cattle or cattle by-products from countries whose cattle have had BSE, a Canadian agricultural department spokesman said.
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