$17M earmarked for mad cow disease prevention efforts

The provincial and federal governments are spending more than $17 million to help Manitoba's cattle industry find new ways to get rid of cattle tissue that could harbour mad cow disease.

The funding was announced Wednesday, a day before an enhanced feed ban from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency went into effect, prohibiting the use of cattle brains, eyes and other nerve tissue— called specified risk material or SRM— in all livestock feed, pet food and fertilizers.

The new rules widen the ban, which previously applied only to cattle and feed for ruminants, such animals as elk, sheep,goats and bison.

Such material is currently dumped by the tonne in landfills in Manitoba, mostly at the Brady Road Landfill on the south side of Winnipeg.

While insisting there is no problem with that disposal method for SRM, Agriculture Minister Rosann Wowchuk says Manitoba can do better.

"There are no health and safety concerns because it is quite acceptable to put them, this material, in the landfill site. It's acceptable, but we want to look at new and innovative ways."

Using another disposal method — such asincineration — will help reassure other markets about the safety of Manitoba beef, said Wowchuk, who expects to receive the first proposals from the private and public sector for regional disposal systems by the fall.

Canada's first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy—or mad cow disease— was discovered in May 2003, and the United States, Japan and dozens of other countries closed their borders to Canadian beef shortly afterward.

Since then, nine other cases of mad cow disease have been reported in Canada and three south of the border.

BSE has been linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, most of themin Britain.