Canadian inspectors fan out to contain mad cow crisis

Inspectors fanned out across Canada's crippled cattle industry yesterday to search for more clues of mad cow disease after one case forced several farms into quarantine and sparked worldwide bans on Canadian beef.

Three more farms - all in British Columbia, which had so far escaped the crisis - were sealed off, CBC Television reported, bringing the total to 12 since the first case of the deadly brain-wasting disease was revealed on Tuesday.

Attention was focused on a big livestock feeding operation in northern Alberta which purchased more than 200 cattle from the rancher that owned the animal confirmed as Canada's first mad cow case in a decade.

The beef industry, especially in Alberta, Canada's top cattle-producing region, is nearly at a standstill after the United States led a host of countries banning Canadian beef.

Federal officials have sealed off ranches and feedlots in the country's three westernmost provinces to trace the sick cow's history, its offspring and whether tainted feed caused the bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

Politicians and heath authorities have taken great pains to stress that there is still just one confirmed case, and that Canadian beef is safe.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors were combing through a feedlot near Barrhead, Alberta, about an hour's drive northwest of Edmonton, which bought 211 cows from Marwyn Peaster, the owner of the afflicted cow.

Operator Walter Schmidt said 600 cattle out of 10,000 at his operation will be slaughtered and tested for the disease, which devastated Britain's cattle industry in the 1990s.

Federal inspectors warned Schmidt on Monday of the suspect cow, which had been slaughtered in late January, and he told Reuters they had confirmed the situation the following day.