Cow disaster :: essays research papers

OTTAWA (CP) - Canadas $8-billion mad cow disaster can be foursquare attributed the failure of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to assess economic consequences of even a single transmitting, says a leading expert. ADVERTISEMENTIm a WomanMan pursuance a ManWoman Age to Postal Code William Leiss of the University of Ottawa, who is also a past president of the Royal Society of Canada, said the CFIA assessed the fortune of mad cow to physical health and human health, but non the risk of losing export markets. Yet Canada was party to an international agreement providing for a ban on exports from any inelegant with even a single case of the disease. The policy was known as "one cow and youre out.""What would be the economic impact of one or good a few cases of BSE (bovine spongiform encepalopathy) in the Canadian herd?" Leiss asked at a World Health Organization conference on risk management."We failed whole to manage or even to recognize this risk at our gr eat cost."He said Canada followed U.S. policies in adopting a minimal testing program. But Canadas risk profile is completely different from that of the United States.At the time, Canada exported 75 per cent of beef production while the United States exported only 10 per cent. Losing export markets was not a serious problem for the Americans, he said."In food issues we are cursed with the political attitude that weve just got to be onside with the U.S. and nothing else matters."He said the CFIA also followed the U.S. lead in making a half-hearted effort to stop recycling infected protein in ruminant food, which is widely believed to be the construct of mad cow disease.Leiss said the CFIA ban on feeding proteins from ruminants to ruminants remains "full of holes."Leiss said the United States conducted a full risk assessment in 1997-98, but Canada did not do one until six years later.CFIA spokesman Marc Richard said the agency didnt include economic consequences i n its assessment because that is not the agencys mandate."We dont usually head the economic stuff," said Richard in an interview. "The risk assessment was based strictly on the disease. Overall were the administrators of the Animal Health Act."The CFIAs risk assessments have to do with animal disease. That is our mandate and in our mandate we specifically dont address economics."But another CFIA official, senior veterinarian Darcy Undseth, said economic consequences of a mad cow infection in Canada were considered in a 2002 risk assessment even though they were not quantified.