Bosso, 8/19/05, p. 7
vaccines are prepared with cattle byproducts, said: “Cow components are
often used simply because cows are very large animals, and thus much
material is available.”
8
Testing at a provincial facility in Edmonton apparently took time or was delayed
for reasons of bureaucratic routine or human error--a matter of much controversy as
subsequent events unfolded--and not until mid-May did the Alberta Minister of
Agriculture, Food, and Rural Development announce that the animal had tested positive
for BSE. If confirmed, it would be the first known indigenous case of BSE in North
America; a case in 1993 was found in an animal imported from the United Kingdom.
Indeed, there is now widespread belief that all North American cases of BSE cases to
come to light since 2003 had common origins in the small number of cattle imported
from the United Kingdom before 1990, when both the U.S. and Canada banned any
importation of UK cattle. Given BSE’s long incubation period, the animals could have
been infected despite appearing healthy when they came into either country.
Based on rules in place since 1990, any suspected case of BSE in Canada must be
reported to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)--itself established only in 1997
to “enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of federal inspection and related services for
food and animal and plant health by consolidating them”--so provincial authorities sent
the brain to a federal lab in Winnipeg for more tests.
9
Federal officials confirmed the
existence of BSE in the cow, but decided to fly tissue samples to the now-authoritative
World Reference Laboratory in Weybridge, England for definitive testing. The results
came back within days, and confirmed the existence of BSE in the animal
10
Federal and provincial authorities, using a tracking system established since 2001,
traced the animal to the farm from which it came, quarantined the facility, and began to
Convention