Canada confirms new mad cow disease case

OTTAWA, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed Tuesday a new case of mad cow disease in Alberta province.
The carcass of the 13 year-old animal is under control, and no part of it entered the human food or animal feed systems, the CFIA said in a news release.
This is Canada's 11th reported case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, since 2003.
The infected animal was identified by a national monitoring program that tests cattle at Canadian farms.
The infected animal was born before 1997, when Canada imposed a ban on the use of certain animal parts in animal feeds.
The CFIA is conducting an investigation to identify the animal's herdmates at the time of birth and the ways it might have become infected.
Mad cow disease, which attacks the central nervous system, is thought to be spread mainly in contaminated feed, when animals consume the meat of infected animals. It attacks an animal through hard-to-destroy protein forms called prions, which can multiply in the brain, reducing it to a spongy wreck.