A single case of "mad cow" disease has turned up in Canada, leading to the ban of all US imports of Canadian beef.

Is the ban reasonable? Is this simply a case of normal epidemiological precautions, or an opportunity to stuff it to the Chretien government one more time, show them that they better toe the American line or else....?

Here's the missing link to an actual news story about this. There's a brief mention carefully buried in a FAQ at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Given that the cow was detected before it was slaughtered, and its entire herd quarantined, I'd say a total ban is overkill. However, it's hard to overstate the danger posed by BSE. It's incurable, incubates for decades, and the prions currently thought to be responsible are darn near indestructible. If you want a really good scare, I recommend Richard Rhodes's Deadly Feasts.

Normal and reasonable procedure, and just temporary while they investigate and try to find out if there are more cases and where they came from.

I think it is completely reasonable to put a temporary ban on any country's beef if mad cow disease has been discovered.

There is no test for mad cow disease in living cows. This test took 15 weeks to complete. Apparently, according to this Reuters article, the disease has a 2 to 8 year incubation period.

According to this Washington Post article, 500,000 live Canadian cattle were imported last year. That's about 1,369 a day average.

Seems reasonable enough for me.

Mike

Being an afficiando of porterhouse steaks and rib roasts, please make sure my beef is happy, not mad.

We need to be very careful about our food supplies, especially imported food due to disease and other impacts like introducing aggressive insects and noxious weeds. I'd rather we overreact than underreact.

Living in cow country, don't think we even have Canadian beef out thisaway. I'm even surprised any beef is imported at all. Oh well, live and learn, eh?

I was surprised by that as well. I figured that if nothing else, the US had plenty of fat cows and not all of them are serving in Congress. In any case, as a beef lover I too support this ban, hopefully temporary. The last thing we need right now is a break-out of this disease here in the US.

They could end CJD today if it really bothered them. Its caused by the mixing of animal products into cattle feed.

If people really cared about this and similar cases, they would do more to prevent the unnecessary 'preparation' of their food.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,276...,961990,00.html

I remember watching a Nightline about this back when the UK and Europe were having such a massive problem with this disease and they did indeed blame it on using cattle products in cattle feed. I also recall them saying that practice had been banned in the US for a number of years and thus it was unlikely that we would suffer a similar fate. I wonder if Canada has also banned the practice and if so, then what happened?

Aquilla

You won't be surprised I bet, to learn that at the height of the Mad Cow hysteria in Europe, much of the blame was given to the companies which made the feed, many of whom were actually US firms...

sorry but I couldn' t resist

Canada has NOT banned the practice; much to the chagrin of any Canadians who followed the European BSE crisis. The disease can survive in feed in the form of prions, but there is also concern now that it has been transmitted from other species of mammals found in N. America, and has a possible link the Wasting Disease that is decimating Deer and Elk populations.