Canada confirms mad cow disease in Manitoba cow

TORONTO, July 4 - Canada confirmed its sixth home-grown case of mad cow disease on Tuesday, a discovery that has triggered a broader investigation.

The disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was found in a mature cross-bred beef cow from the Prairie province of Manitoba, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said.

The infected cow was born "well before" the 1997 introduction of Canada's ban on cattle feed containing protein from cattle and other ruminants, the CFIA said. A calf born to the cow in 2004 is also being traced, but it isn't known if the animal is alive.

The CFIA has also started working on finding any cattle that may have been born around the same time as the infected cow and raised in similar circumstances on the same farm, CFIA senior veterinarian George Luterbach said.

"If we can identify any of the birth-herd mates or those that were born around the same time as this infected animal and consumed the same feed on the birth farm, we would remove those as a precaution," he said.

The discovery marks Canada's sixth home-grown case of the disease since the first was detected in 2003. Canada confirmed its fifth case in April in a six-year-old dairy cow in British Columbia.

The CFIA had said earlier that no parts of the animal's carcass entered either the human or animal feed systems.

- REUTERS