Canada reported its first case of mad cow disease in a decade yesterday, sending shock waves through the North American food industry just weeks after the country's economy was damaged by the SARS threat.
A cow in Alberta, Canada's top cattle-producing province and a major beef exporter to the United States, tested positive on Friday for brain-wasting bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in a test conducted after it was slaughtered last winter, government officials said.
"The actual test was taken January 31st from a cow in Fairview, Alberta," an official with the Canadian Beef Export Federation said.
"It's just one isolated case of an 8-year-old cow."
But the report sent a major chill through the continent's economy, triggering bans on Canadian beef and sparking a sell-off in cattle futures and food-related stocks such as hamburger giant McDonald's Corp.
The currency in Canada, the world's third-largest beef exporter, also fell after the news but later rebounded.
The animal was not processed and its northern Alberta herd of 150 animals will be slaughtered, as will any other found to be affected, Canadian Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief told a nationally televised news conference in the Alberta capital of Edmonton.
The United States quickly slapped a temporary ban on imports of Canadian cattle, sheep and goats as well as meat and other products. But the US Agriculture Department said the threat of transmitting the disease to animals in the United States was very low and it planned no further measures.
Japan and South Korea, the third and fourth largest markets for Canada's beef exports, issued similar importation bans, with South Korea also banning the importation of Canadian dairy products.
Canada's only other case of mad cow disease was in 1993, but the animal was imported from Britain, where the disease led to the slaughter of 3.7 million cattle and a US ban on British imports.