Mad cow from Canada made it into pet food in 2003:Mad Cow Prompts Dog Food Recall
May 27, 2003(CBS) U.S. consumers are being asked to return dog food that may have come from a Canadian cow that tested positive for mad cow disease.
Pet Pantry International of Carson City, Nev., which issued the request Monday, said customers should search for two products: "Maintenance Diet" with a "use by" date of "17FEB04" and "Beef with Barley" with a date of "05MAR04.
If found, the food should be held for pickup. The company's products are purchased by phone or e-mail and delivered by franchises to consumers' homes.
There is no known risk to dogs and no evidence that dogs could transmit the disease to humans, the Food and Drug Administration said. The voluntary return is a precaution to prevent discarded dog food from getting mixed with feed for cattle, goats or sheep.
Customers who purchased dog food since February should check their supplies and, if found, should call the company at 1-800-381-7387. Pet Pantry also is using sales records to contact consumers.
The suspect food, in 50 pound bags, was produced in Canada by Champion Pet Food of Morinville, Alberta.
The Canadian government already has prevented meat from the single diseased cow to be processed for human food.
Meanwhile, nearly 400 head of cattle have been killed to test their brains for mad cow disease and to conduct genetic sampling to try to trace the origin of the infected cow found in Canada, officials said.
All 192 animals that comprised the entire herd of the infected cow have tested negative for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, agriculture officials said Monday.
North America's first mad cow case in a decade, detected last week, caused the United States and other countries to close their markets to Canadian beef products and raised questions about industry regulation.
Besides the 192 cows that tested negative, another 180 have been slaughtered for testing and genetic tracing to find where and when the infected cow was born, Brian Evans, chief veterinary officer for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said Monday.
"It may ultimately not be possible to determine the source herd with absolute certainty," Evans said. "We will not stop until we're absolutely clear the trail has gone cold."
All cattle killed for testing come from five of the 17 farms or feed lots quarantined in the investigation trying to trace all movement and feed sources of the infected cow, which was slaughtered in January.
Four of those farms are in Alberta, the heart of Canada's cattle country, including the one where the infected cow last lived, and another farm is in Saskatchewan where the animal spent four years, Evans said.
Cattle feed from animal sources contaminated with BSE is considered the most likely cause of the infection, and officials want to trace all sources of feed that the cow received throughout its life.
That means figuring out where the cow was born, where it lived and what food sources it received, Evans said.
"In all likelihood, this animal was exposed (to BSE) fairly early in life," Evans said. "It's an extensive investigation."
So far, officials cannot say with certainty which farm the cow was born on and whether it is 6 or 8 years old. Canada banned the use of ruminant animal-based feed for cattle in 1997, meaning the infected cow could have eaten infected food before the ban took effect.
Mad cow disease was first diagnosed in Britain in 1986 and is thought to have spread through cow feed made with protein and bone meal from mammals.
The human form of BSE is the fatal brain-wasting illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which causes paralysis and death. Scientists believe humans develop new variants of Creutzfeldt-Jakob when they eat meat from infected animals. More than 130 people have died of the disease, mostly in Britain.
Since the announcement of the BSE case in Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Indonesia and Barbados banned all beef imports from Canada, despite reassurances from government and industry officials that the beef is safe.
Officials are visiting the slaughtering plant, feed mill and labs that handled material from the infected cow to ensure that correct procedures were followed. The search involves 200 farms that may have gotten feed from 10 mills, they said.
Early indications showed the infected cow might have been born on a Canadian farm, which would make it the first case of a North American-born animal contracting the illness known as mad cow disease which decimated the British beef industry in the 1990s.
The only previous case of BSE in North America was in 1993, involving a bull imported from Britain. The animal and its herd were slaughtered, but no trade bans resulted.
While Canadian authorities and farmers say the lone case of BSE presents minimal public risk, the closing of major foreign markets to Canada's beef products brought immediate cuts in production and uncertainty to a US$22 billion industry.
"It's really put the industry in a tailspin," said Greg Hawkwood, who runs a cattle operation in Cochrane, Alberta. Sales have been canceled, leaving farmers with no market for their product, he said.
Some U.S. legislators have called for Canada to improve its testing and monitoring of the cattle industry before the ban on Canadian beef imports gets lifted.
Canadian officials have said they would consider whatever changes were needed to restore confidence in the industry.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/28/health/main542336.shtml
