Mad Cow Disease

Recently an expert in BSE, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or Mad Cow Disease) came to speak to my class. I learnt a lot, specifically when discussing the economics and science behind the rendering process with her. It was during this time that it clicked for me how stunned the whole the cause of the national spread of this disease was.

The spread was caused by feeding ruminants to ruminants ( the meat of herbivores to herbivores). In my opinion this was possibly the single more stunned thing livestock operations has ever put in practice.

A Ruminant is a hoofed animal that chews cud. (any cud-chewing hoofed mammal with an even number of toes and a stomach with multiple chambers, e.g. cattle, camels, and giraffes.)
(Microsoft® Encarta® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)

Basically in the 1990's the government and people in the agriculture industry asked themselves how they could be less wasteful of left over parts of cattle (ie bone meal and left over organs that North Americans aren't accustom to eating and there for won't buy), and provide cattle with more protein. Their solution? To feed their cattle other cattle! Bones and organs from other deceased ruminants were taken and rendered. (Rendering : heating animals remains to extract fat : the process of separating fat from meat or animal remains by slow heating.)(Microsoft® Encarta® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.) The rendered material was compressed into pellets and mixed with animal feed.

At the time livestock producers were worried about their animals not getting enough plant protein because grain was "poor quality". By feeding cattle the cooked remains of other animals they could provide animal protein.

You would think this would raise a red flag since the animals were herbivores. You'd think there would be tests done to make sure it was safe but it doesn't seem like there were any test done and if they were they were ignored or at least unreported. This process was considered an economic way for the industry to dispose of unwanted waste and farmers to cheaply supplement cattle with protein.

In 1993 Canada had it's first out break of BSE, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as Mad Cow disease. This was caused by livestock eating unnaturally. Livestock were consuming other cattle that had BSE and there for spreading the disease.

There were many outcomes because of this. MANY MANY cows had to be slaughtered, those with the disease, those in their blood line etc... truck loads and truck loads of cattle had to be incinerated.

The US closed it's border for Canadian meat trade. Canada lost about11 million a day just from loss of exports .

A complete feed ban was put into practice in Canada, and it was made illegal for ruminants to be feed to other ruminants. Any cow over 30 months is now tagged and checked, and SRM (specific risk material) for BSE (materials such as cattle brain, spinal cord or small intestine) are incinerated and then buried. The only place that SRM ruminants can be used as of now is in pet food (which also seems inappropriate) but as of July 12 2007 that too will be banned.

Canada's BSE cases have decreases drastically. Our last case was this year (2007) in Alberta and did not spread.

Additional to the loss of export earnings there was added costs of farmer compensation , and sanitation/inspection/ new system for limiting BSE outbreaks.

It's almost sickly funny to think that the whole idea behind feeding ruminants to ruminants was economics (to save money). It's ironic that the process ended up costing Canada billions of dollars. The meat industry will never be economically efficient and that's all that's too it.