Canadian feed policy and BSE

The BSE Inquiry, an independent study that examined the British government’s response to the emergence of the disease, summed up the evolution of the use of meat and bone meals (MBM) in cattle feed: In the UK, the use of MBM in ruminant nutrition was well established by the 1920s. [...] B. Review of the 1997 Feed Ban Following the discovery of two new cases of BSE in the Canadian herd in January 2005, the efficiency of the feed ban was put into question since one of the animals was born shortly after the implementation of the prohibition against feeding ruminants with animal proteins. [...] On 11 January 2005, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food announced that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) would undertake a review of the feed ban in order to look at the control measures put in place and examine the CFIA’s inspection program to assess compliance with the relevant part of the Health of Animals Regulations. [...] The USDA review indicated that “Canada has a robust inspection program, that overall compliance with the feed ban is good and that the feed ban is reducing the risk of transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the Canadian cattle population.”(8) Early in 2005, media reports suggested that a CFIA field trial using microscopic analysis was indicative of non-compliance with the feed ban. [...] The CFIA confirmed that the trial only demonstrated the limitations of the testing methodology, and that compliance with the feed ban is verified at multiple points in the feed chain.