Water buffalo herd ordered killed over mad cow fears
A couple on Vancouver Island are finding out how serious Canada is in its zero-tolerance policy about mad cow disease. And they're in court trying to fight it.
Anthea Archer has been told her entire herd of water buffalo will have to be destroyed.
She'll try to convince a judge on Wednesday that's not necessary.
Archer imported 27 of the animals from Denmark in January. Then a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, was found in that country.
There's no way to tell if the water buffalo are infected, so the Canadian Food Inspection Agency wants the imported animals killed.
Archer thinks that's a draconian response. The government thinks it's justified.
- FROM NOV. 14: Fears of mad cow disease resurface in Europe
- FROM DEC. 4: EU ministers agree to new mad cow measure
In the mid-1990s, thousands of cattle were destroyed in Britain, crippling the industry to a point from which some say it will never recover.
While the agriculture sector is concerned about the danger posed by mad cow disease to the industry, perhaps the greater concern is the fact that 80 people in Britain have died from the human form of the disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD).
The toll is expected to rise dramatically in Britain and other European countries such as France, where the first cases have been found.
Archer says she brought the animals here to produce milk that even people with dairy intolerance can drink.
"They've passed all the import tests," she said. "They've done everything we hoped they'd be.
"We're just caught in a political and trade bind."
Mad cow disease has been linked to meat-based animal feed, which European ministers agreed this week to ban for the next six months. But Archer says her buffalo eat grass.
If she can't get the kill order reversed, Archer says she and her husband will take their herd and move to where they can keep them.