Gov’t bans cattle from Canada due to mad cow disease

Philippine quarantine officials are set to ban all beef imports from Canada after a recent discovery of a mad cow disease in one of the cattle-producing regions in northern Alberta.

The announcement made last Tuesday by Canadian agriculture officials noted that this was the first known case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE in North America in a decade.

DA officials said the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) is likely to issue an administrative order (AO) today that would call for the ban on all beef products including live cattle, sheep and goat, their meat and meat products; bovine embryo; meat and bone meal and other feed ingredient derived from said cloven hoofed animals.

BAI officials said there is a need to ban the entry of Canadian meat products particularly cattle, sheep and goat meat since there is increasing scientific evidence that BSE can trigger the spread of an epidemic on the local cattle industry and could cause debilitating and dreadful Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease when ingested by humans.

Pending confirmation from the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) on the outbreak of mad cow. Japan Taiwan and Korea already prohibited the entry of Canadian beef imports since Tuesday.

Aside from these countries, major cattle producer Australia, has also banned cattle imports from Canada. New Zealand is expected to follow suit.

The AO to be issued by BAI, will call for the immediate suspension of the processing, evaluation and issuance of veterinary quarantine clearances and SPS import permit for applications relevant to the importation of affected animals from Canada.

At the same time, all shipments of affected products will be confiscated based on the implementation date of the import ban.

Currently, the Philippines continues to maintain its ban on beef products from Japan and several European countries when the mad cow disease plagued these regions in recent years.

Last year, the DA imposed a temporary ban on Japanese beef when mad cow disease corrupted its domestic cattle industry, while the prohibition on the entry of beef products from the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Germany was imposed since November 2000.

Since the country prohibited beef imports from Japan and Europe, it has been increasing its imports from Canada to meet local demand.

Philippine imports of beef reached 767,222 kilos in 2002 from 288,695 kilos in 2001. Importation figures for the first quarter of 2003 showed imports reached 474,709 kilos.