National Milk Producers Federation

ARLINGTON, VA – The most recent case of mad cow disease in Canada, discovered last week in a 66 month-old cow in British Columbia, is yet another illustration of why the U.S. government should not reopen its border to Canadian animals for breeding purposes, NMPF said Monday.

In a letter sent today to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, NMPF said that there are still questions about the effectiveness of the feed ban designed to prevent the introduction and spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Even though Canada has prohibited the feeding of mammalian tissues to its cattle since 1997 (as has the U.S.), there have been seven cases of BSE in animals born since then, including five born after the date that the USDA has determined that Canada has been effectively enforcing the feed ban, March 1, 1999. The USDA is considering allowing animals born after that date to be exported to the U.S. for breeding purposes.

“The enforcement of the 1997 feed ban does not appear to be effective in preventing the spread of BSE in Canada,” wrote Jerry Kozak, President and CEO of NMPF in the letter. Allowing Canadian cattle to be imported to the U.S. “has the high probability” of introducing a BSE-infected animal, he said.

All five of those recent BSE cases “could have been exported to the U.S. under the rule that the USDA is about to adopt,” Kozak said.

“And once those animals would have been discovered to have BSE, the headlines would have been ‘U.S. discovers another case of mad cow disease,' not ‘U.S. imports another Canadian animal with mad cow,'” Kozak said. “Their problems, once exported to the U.S., become our cattle industry's problems, and we need better assurances on Canada's feed ban practices before we open ourselves up and make ourselves more vulnerable,” he said.

He noted that the first case of mad cow disease discovered in the U.S., in December 2003, was in an animal born in Canada. Yet the U.S. is still struggling to regain its normal export markets for beef more than three years after that discovery.

Because Canada's own government estimates that it will detect more cases of BSE in the next decade, NMPF believes that the USDA should not finalize regulations to allow animals for breeding or herd replacement purposes from Canada.

NMPF does not oppose importation of Canadian cattle for direct slaughter purposes, but the USDA “should not allow importation of live animals that could reside in the U.S. cattle population,” the letter said. “Both domestic and export markets for U.S. producers will be disrupted” if additional BSE cases are discovered in the U.S., and those disruptions will have significant negative economic impacts that “will be borne by U.S. producers,” Kozak said.