AR-News: Canadian firm denies link to mad cow case

[jim robertson]

Canadian firm denies link to mad cow case

By TARA BRAUTIGAM
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

TORONTO -- The top executive of a Canadian rendering plant denied his 
company was the source of a U.S. case of mad cow disease, saying Wednesday 
his business adheres to strict guidelines and that it's premature to place 
blame.

"I don't think we produce contaminated feed," Barry Glotman said in an 
interview with The Associated Press.

Glotman, president of West Coast Reduction, owns and operates Northern 
Alberta Processing and several other of the plants, which process animal 
carcasses.

The Edmonton Journal reported Wednesday that Canadian food safety 
investigators had established a tentative link between the Edmonton 
rendering plant and the infected Holstein found on a Washington state farm.

The plant may have provided contaminated materials to mills that mixed feed 
for the Alberta farm where U.S. officials believe the cow was born - as well 
as to another farm in the province where a case of mad cow disease was 
discovered in May.

Glotman confirmed Tom Spiller, who is heading the investigation into the 
feed sources of both animals for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, had 
recently visited the plant and asked for records showing where the company 
sells its meat and bone meal.

"They're just basically checking," Glotman said from West Coast Reduction's 
headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia. "We've been audited."

But Glotman said "it's a little premature right now" to blame his plant.

Glotman said since 1997 a ban has been in place to prevent cattle from 
eating brain and spine tissue from infected animals. He said his companies 
have adhered to that ban and undergone random inspections by Alberta 
officials.

"Our plants are fully compliant," he said.

Keith Kalbfleisch, the manager of Northern Alberta Processing, noted that 
DNA tests must still confirm that the Washington state cow came from Alberta 
as believed.

He insisted it was unlikely his plant was the source of the contamination.

"You have to have a case of BSE to infect the cow in the first place, so if 
you believe this story, we must have had BSE back in 1997. You have to have 
something infected in order to have infected material," he said.

More than 30 countries have banned American beef products since mad cow 
disease surfaced in Washington state a week ago. Canada identified its first 
case of mad cow disease in May in Alberta.







"A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he 
eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his 
appetite."   --Leo Tolstoy

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