Inspectors want sick cattle kept out of food chain. If an animal is too sick to stand, it shouldn't be taken to a slaughterhouse, agency says

Nicholas Read
Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Canadian cattle are under extra scrutiny after BSE case.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is recommending that livestock too sick or injured to stand or walk should not be transported to abattoirs for slaughter, saying the practice represents a potential risk to human health.

It was a so-called "downed" cow from a farm in Saskatchewan that was found to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- or mad cow disease -- when it was taken to a slaughterhouse in Alberta in May.

Though the CFIA doesn't keep national statistics on how many downed animals are slaughtered and introduced to the human food chain each year, the number is thought to be in the thousands.

In Ontario in 2001, the most recent year for which numbers are available, 7,382 non-ambulatory cattle were observed at federally inspected plants, but only 37 per cent of them were condemned. The rest were passed as meat.

Gord Doonan, a CFIA veterinarian and chief of the agency's transportation of animals program, says the practice should be halted.

Writing in the Canadian Veterinary Journal, Doonan and co-authors Martin Appelt and Alena Corbin concluded: "The marketing of livestock compromised by disease or injury degrades the welfare of the animal; is an economic burden to the producer, the transporter and the processor; damages the prestige of the livestock production industry; and potentially endangers public health."

In an interview Monday, Doonan said: "We're saying that when an animal is unable to walk, there's an increased risk that that animal has something wrong with it that could pose a risk to food safety."

Instead, he said such animals should be treated at the farm, or, if treatment isn't possible, destroyed there.

Currently, cattle are allowed to be transported for up to 53 continuous hours without food, water or exercise. If they collapse while en route to an abattoir, they are dragged from the truck with a chain.

Doonan said veterinarians are on site at federally inspected slaughterhouses to examine downed animals, but they are not in a position to diagnose what's wrong with them, and allowing them into the food chain does "represent an increased risk."

"It could be BSE. It could be another infectious disease or a non-infectious disease. There are so many conditions that could affect a downed animal. Some would not pose a health risk to humans, but some would."

Later this year, the CFIA will mail a consultation paper to stakeholders in the livestock industry outlining its proposal. It tried to implement a similar ban 10 years ago, but ranchers and abattoir owners resisted the idea, saying it would cost them too much money.

Now, Doonan hopes that in light of the BSE crisis, they will be more amenable.

"I'm hoping we're in a different environment now and we might have better luck. I think we have more information now than we did then. I think this is something that Canadians want, and we'll find out when we do the consultations."

Statistically, downed animals are far more likely to have BSE than outwardly healthy animals. According to 1990 figures from the European Union, 84 cases of BSE were identified from among 150,000 downed animals compared with 75 cases among 1.5 million cattle termed healthy.

Peggy Strankman, manager of environmental affairs for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association in Calgary, declined to comment on the proposal, saying: "I don't know how to comment on something I haven't seen."

But Debra Probert, executive director of the Vancouver Humane Society and a member of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals, a group working to reduce cruelty in the livestock industry, says the CFIA is on the right track.

"We would like to see federal regulations that would ensure that downer animals are not moved and are euthanized on-farm," Probert said. "Moving downer animals causes massive unnecessary suffering."

Earlier this year, Michael Hansen, a biologist with the Consumers Union of the U.S., called allowing downed animals into the food chain "outrageous," citing the risk of BSE.

© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun