Yesterday, Canada confirmed a new case of mad cow disease (also called BSE), the country's 11th case since the disease was first discovered there in 2003.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said no part of the cow's carcass entered the human food or animal feed chains and is therefore no threat to the public health.
The animal was identified as a 13-year-old cow from Alberta by the national monitoring program, which targets cattle most at risk for the disease also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy and has tested about 190,000 animals since 2003.
The animal, from an unidentified farm, was born before the implementation of Canada's feed ban in 1997.
They expect to detect a small number of cases over the next 10 years as Canada progresses toward its goal of eliminating the disease from the national cattle herd.
"This detection confirms the ongoing high level of commitment and stewardship on the part of Canadian cattle producers to food safety and animal health," the CFIA said in a statement, saying it did not expect the latest discovery to affect Canada's international standing as a country with a controlled risk for BSE.
Eating meat products with infected tissue is linked to a rare, fatal illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, that has killed more than 150 people worldwide, most of them in Britain.
Editor:
"The government states that the 11th case was reported last May 2nd, which means the latest one is the 12th case!"
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