VANCOUVER -
Mad cow disease has been found in a dairy cow in British Columbia but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says there isn't any risk to public health as no part of the animal entered the human food or animal feed systems.
The agency says it appears the 5 1/2-year-old cow was exposed to a small amount of infected material, likely during its first year of life.
B.C. Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said Wednesday the animal was destroyed last week and the farm has been put under quarantine.
"All of the herd-mates of this particular animal are being tested right now. We have a very good identification system in B.C., so we'll be able to trace down all the animals individually that were brought up with this particular dairy cow,'' said Bell.
Bell also said this discovery was not completely unexpected and he doubts there will be retaliation from the United States.
"Certainly it's something that we thought could happen. We understand the dynamics of BSE at this point and it would not surprise me if we had one more in the next two or three years.''
In April 2006 another B.C. dairy cow was found with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and the food inspection agency said that case was caused by contaminated feed.
A ban on using feed that may contain animal products takes effect in Canada in July, but CFIA says it still expects to find a small number of BSE cases over the next 10 years, by which time the disease should be eliminated from the national cattle herd entirely.
"Canada has taken all necessary measures to achieve the eventual elimination of BSE from the national cattle herd,'' the agency said.
"Canada has a suite of robust BSE control measures which exceeds the recommended international standards.''
BSE is a degenerative disease of the nervous system of cattle and is linked to a rare, fatal disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is caused if humans eat contaminated beef.
In Canada, BSE poses an extremely low risk to human health. The only case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob was detected in a person who lived in the United Kingdom for an extended period of time during the peak of its BSE epidemic.
