News & Perspective

Editor's Note: This article, originally published Aug 11, was updated on Aug 12 to include new information from Mexico.

(CIDRAP News) – Following up on an announcement made last week, the Canadian government yesterday published new regulations designed to keep materials potentially contaminated with the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) agent out of the food supply.

(CIDRAP News) – In the first regulatory change triggered by Canada's recent case of mad cow disease, the Canadian government announced last week that certain high-risk parts of cattle, including the brain and spinal cord, will have to be removed from carcasses at the time of slaughter.

(CIDRAP News) – Canada's official report on its response to the mad cow disease case in Alberta suggests that the case might have resulted from the importation of American cattle or contaminated feed into Canada, among other possibilities.

(CIDRAP News) – A team of experts who reviewed Canada's response to the recent mad cow disease case in Alberta recommended last week that Canada increase its efforts to ensure that high-risk parts of cattle do not end up in either human food or animal feed.

(CIDRAP News) – The hunt for additional cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canada is winding down after uncovering no evidence of the disease in about 2,700 cattle, Canadian officials announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Five bulls having possible links to the Canadian cow that had mad cow disease were shipped into the United States, but it is unlikely that any of the bulls were infected with the disease, US officials said this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says the recent detection of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Canadian cow shows that active surveillance programs for BSE are working.

"The identification of a single case of BSE is not a cause for panic," Andrew Speedy of the FAO's Animal Production and Health Division said in a news release from the agency's Rome headquarters.

(CIDRAP News) – Initial testing of more than 370 cattle from several herds in Alberta's investigation into bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) detected no cases beyond the single case revealed May 20, according to Canadian agriculture officials.

(CIDRAP News) – Postmortem tests have confirmed that a cow from an Alberta farm had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, Canadian officials announced today. The news marked the first known BSE case in North America since another Alberta case was found in 1993.