Canada broadens hunt for clues

Canadian inspectors in two provinces prepared yesterday to broaden their search for clues as to how the country came to record its first case of mad cow disease in 10 years.

Time is of the essence, since Canada's major trading partners have banned Canadian beef imports and a long stoppage could devastate the cattle industry.

The diseased cow came from a herd in northern Alberta which will be slaughtered and tested for the disease. Results are expected in the next few days.

Two other herds have also been quarantined - one in neighboring Saskatchewan, the province where the cow may have been born. Inspectors said they would expand their examinations of the animals in those herds.

"If we suspect anything we're going to do more testing... if we know a cow is from there (one of the two herds) and remained there it will be slaughtered and tested," Francine Lord of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) told CBC television.

In an unsourced report CBC said three more herds could also soon be isolated, although a CFIA spokeswoman said she could not confirm this. At stake is Alberta's C$4 billion cattle industry, which has ground to a virtual standstill. Officials say severe damage would be done if the import bans lasted for more than two weeks.

The crisis centers on an eight-year-old cow from the northern Peace River area of Alberta which was suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) when it was slaughtered and sent to a rendering plant in January.

Officials are now trying to trace its background to see whether it contracted the disease from its feed or might have been born to a cow which came from Britain, where an outbreak of the disease in the 1990s led to the slaughter of 3.7 million cattle and a worldwide ban on British beef.

Canada's last mad cow case was in 1993, but that animal had been imported from Britain and was destroyed.

Last year Alberta shipped more than half a million live cattle to the United States, which on Wednesday placed farms, feedlots and meat plants under increased scrutiny.