Canada beef industry sputters amid mad cow probe

Losses mounted in Canada's crippled beef industry yesterday as a single case of mad cow disease kept the world's borders closed to its exports, but cattle country was buoyed by tests showing the sick animal's herd was disease-free.

Inspectors have sealed off 17 farms across western Canada to search through the family tree of the one cow revealed last week as the country's first case of the deadly brain-wasting disease in a decade.

With the crisis about to enter its second week, health officials are also probing where the cow lived and what the feeding practices were at each location.

The heavily export-oriented cattle industry has already lost an estimated C$66 million ($48 million) in revenues since the United States and other countries banned Canadian beef and cattle shipments, calling into question the safety of North America's food supply.

But industry officials said they were optimistic that ranches under quarantine in Alberta - Canada's top cattle region - and in Saskatchewan and British Columbia would test disease-free, as the sick cow's herd did on Sunday.

"We really are confident that this is an isolated case limited to one animal," said Cindy McCreath, spokeswoman for the Calgary-based Canadian Cattlemen's Association. "All the precautions are in place to prevent this disease from spreading beyond a single animal and those precautions were put in place many years ago should this ever occur."

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, ravaged Britain in the 1990s, forcing the slaughter of 3.7 million cows and worldwide bans on British beef. It was believed to have been spread by feed tainted by the remains of infected animals, a practice that was banned in North America.

Canada's only other case was in 1993, but the cow was born in Britain and it was destroyed along with its herd.