Canada Confirms 14th Case of BSE

Canadian officials have confirmed the14th case of mad cow disease in a six-year-old beef cow that was born years after Canada banned feed practices thought to cause the disease, USAgNet reports.  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said no part of the animal’s carcass entered the human-food or animal-feed systems.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is believed to be spread when cattle eat protein rendered from brains and spines of infected cattle or sheep.  Canada banned that practice in 1997.  But, more than half of Canada’s BSE cases were animals born after 2000, despite the 1997 feed ban that followed a European outbreak of the brain-wasting livestock disease.