World closes freezers to Canadian beef
• Authorities across globe take wait-and-see attitude

• Quarantine spreads to 2nd province

• Investigators try to track its trail to Alberta farm Saskatchewan now part of probe into spread of BSE

VALERIE LAWTON
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA—Two more cattle ranches — including one in Saskatchewan — were quarantined yesterday as investigators try to trace the whereabouts of an Alberta cow with mad cow disease.

The beef cow with the first confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canada in the last decade apparently spent time at those two cattle ranches before it joined a herd of 150 cows near the community of Wanham in northwestern Alberta. That ranch was put under quarantine Tuesday.

"The cow in question, at one point of its life, was in these two herds and that's why these herds are considered an important part of the investigation," said Dr. Claude Lavigne of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

Federal officials refused to say where the other two quarantined farms are or how large the herds there are, citing confidentiality reasons. But Saskatchewan's agriculture minister, Clay Serby, said a farm in the northwest part of the province has been placed under quarantine because the cow may have been "originally born in Saskatchewan."

Last night, CTV News reported the animal was born on a farm near Lloydminster, Sask., and sold about eight months later to a farm in Alberta.

Lavigne said it's possible the 8-year-old cow spent time on other farms, but agency investigators aren't sure yet.

Many other questions remained unanswered yesterday, including whether the infected cow was imported or born in Canada, how it was infected and whether other animals in this country have mad cow disease.

"It's possible we might find some more (infected cows) and that's why we're looking," said Lavigne.

"We're kind of hoping that we don't find any others. If we do, we'll deal with them." While the cattle at the Wanham farm are being destroyed immediately, the herds at the other two farms will be kept alive for now, Lavigne said.

The CFIA announced on Tuesday that tests confirmed that a cow slaughtered Jan. 31 had BSE.

The news has devastated the cattle industry. Agriculture officials in the U.S. — Canada's biggest market — moved immediately to temporarily banned beef imports from Canada. Australia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand and Mexico quickly followed suit.

Ontario Agriculture Minister Helen Johns said yesterday she believes the American ban could last about 10 days.

The economic impact is most severe in Alberta but in Guelph, the Better Beef, which slaughters cattle, yesterday gave layoff notices to all 1,100 employees. Two large slaughterhouses in Alberta cut production and reduced staff.

The owner of the infected cow is Marwyn Peaster, a commercial catfish farmer from Mississippi who switched to cattle when he moved to northwestern Alberta three years ago to marry a local woman.

The probe into where the cow was before it arrived on Peaster's farm is stretching into a number of different directions.

Members of a team that includes dozens of investigators are poring over paperwork of cattle owners, truckers and auction markets to try to find out where the animal originated.

Lavigne said "the quality of those records from one owner to another varies," explaining why the process may take some time.

Investigators are trying to track down the more than 200 calves born at the Wanham farm over the last year and ordering them into quarantine.

It's possible the diseased cow gave birth to a handful of calves, but they haven't been identified yet, Lavigne told a news conference in Edmonton yesterday. At least one study has shown there's a possibility BSE can be transmitted from mother to calf.

"The calves of this animal possibly could have entered the human food chain," Lavigne acknowledged, but he insisted the risk to people who might have eaten that meat "is extremely low."

He said "in all probability" the cow was infected by eating food made from other animals contaminated with BSE, which is the most common form of transmission.

Canada has prohibited the practice of giving cows feed made from processed cattle carcasses since 1997, and banned imports of such feed from contaminated countries years than that. Investigators are looking at what the diseased cow, born in 1995, was given to eat over its lifetime.

Cattle on Peaster's farm were loaded on to transport trucks yesterday to be sent to an abattoir in Lethbridge, Alta., to be destroyed. Tissue samples from their brains will be tested for BSE, with results expected back early next week.

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien did his best to quell fears about Canadian beef yesterday by sitting down to a steak lunch on a restaurant patio in front of a horde of reporters and cameras.

"It's an isolated case," he said, praising Canada's BSE detection system as one of the best in the world. "We hope this problem will not last long."

"It is an incident that is very deplorable because the beef industry is a very important industry for Canada and it's a very integrated industry with the United States, too."

Alberta is already asking for federal aid, but Chrétien said it's too early to talk about that.

"Let's see what the problem is first. If it is one herd, it is not the same thing (as) if it is spread. ... After we have more information we will advise."

Canada tested for BSE on the carcasses of less than 3,400 of the roughly 3.4 million cattle slaughtered here last year. Tests are conducted only on animals considered to be at higher risk.

Lavigne acknowledged the figure doesn't sound large, but said the number is well above what international experts have recommended. European countries test far more, but he said: "You can't compare us at all. We're not in a situation of a heavily infected country."

Alberta agriculture officials have come under fire for taking more than three months to test samples taken from the Wanham cow.

Chief provincial veterinarian Gerald Ollis said yesterday that "in a perfect world" the tests would have been done sooner. However, he said that the cow wasn't considered a priority for testing because it wasn't suspected of having BSE and it had already been deemed unfit for human consumption because it was emaciated and had advanced pneumonia. "But it is not a perfect world and you prioritize as best that you can."

"There was a focus on animals lined up to go into the food chain," he said, but conceded that the province is short of pathologists, having only two working full time. He also said the lab was bogged down with testing deer and elk, rather than cows.

But the Star's Linda Diebel reports from Edmonton that Premier Ralph Klein refuted Ollis' claim. "It is absolutely false ... there was no delay due to giving priority to deer and elk and other so-called exotic animals. The priority of this province is the human food chain."

Dave Kulak, head of the meat-cutting program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, told Canadian Press that "it's a human-made problem because of budgets and government deregulation of inspections."

U.S. experts were scheduled to arrive in Canada yesterday to help in the investigation.

Americans have a huge interest in what happens here because the cattle industries of the two countries are highly integrated.

Great Britain's experience has shown just how sweeping the damage from BSE can be. That country's cattle industry lost billions of dollars and tens of thousands of cows were killed as part of desperate measures to control the disease there.

More than 100 people in Europe have died since 1995 from eating meat from infected cattle.

Only one other case of BSE has been confirmed in Canada, dating back to 1993. A cow imported from Great Britain to central Alberta tested positive and a whole herd was destroyed along with other cattle determined to be at risk.

In that case, the U.S. banned Canadian imports for about a week, and a Mexican ban was only slightly longer, federal officials said. The industry recovered quickly.

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