Canada Confirms Eleventh Case of Mad-Cow Disease

Canada confirmed its 11th case of mad-cow disease, in an animal born before a ban on feed ingredients that can spread the brain-wasting illness.

The sick animal was a 13-year-old beef cow from Alberta, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said today in a statement on its Web site. No part of the animal entered the human food or animal feed systems, it said.

The discovery comes a month after the U.S. lifted most of the remaining import restrictions on beef and cattle from Canada after determining that the animals pose “minimal risk'” for mad-cow disease, clinically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The U.S. banned cattle and beef from Canada in May 2003 when the country confirmed its first BSE case.

"This isn't going to change anything, as our risk assessment factored in additional BSE cases in Canada,'' Karen Eggert, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said today in an interview.

Read the full Bloomberg story here.