030610 Ottawa Plans Funding for Beef ProducersJune 18, 2003Toronto - Canada promised cattlemen $140 million in aid to help revive a beef industry stricken by a lone case of mad cow disease. The money would compensate beef producers for having to dispose of products they cannot sell, Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief said. The United States and other countries slapped bans on importing Canadian beef after a sole case of mad cow disease was confirmed May 20. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency destroyed and tested 2,700 cattle in its search for the source of the case. The source has not been found. It's estimated producers, packers and truckers lost $8.2 million to $18.5 million a day during the ban. No more cases have been found and all farm quarantines have been lifted, the inspection agency said Monday. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as BSE or mad cow, is a fatal disease of the nervous system. It can cause Cretzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, but only if they eat contaminated parts of an animal's nervous system. A BSE outbreak in Britain wiped out a large portion of its cattle industry in the 1990s.
E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com |
