Shortly after the border closed, I sold some embryos to a retired federal vet from Georgia. In discussing the BSE situation in Canada, he told me that our officals should stop looking so hard for BSE. He said" down here when we find them cows that are staggering around we just call it rabies and deal with it that way". I am not sure if he was telling me what he knew, or not, but it did start me thinking.... and wondering.
Kind of reminds me of a few years ago when most of the world was worried about SARS. Canada has several cases , all of which resulted from people arriving from Hong Kong, China, and other far east countries, at our airports. There were many cases around the major Canadian airports of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Entire hospitals were quaranteed and many people were quaranteened in their homes for weeks. It did seem quite strange that while Canada was experiencing this, the US had zero cases. Interestingly, the cases of severe pneumonia at the hospitals near major US airports, spiked in the same time period. I saw an interesting article in a medical journal about this, that was shown to me by a leading doctor here.
Canada has one of the best testing and tracking programs in the world. We have had a mandatory cattle identification program for several years. It is most likely that most of the cases of BSE could have been traced back to the herds of origin if we had not had this tracibility program. At the same time, we have thousands and thousands of people living in this country that have disappeared after they have been ordered deported back to where they came from. I think the solution to this problem is an easy one.... every person who arrives at a Canadian airport or harbour that claims refugee status or comes on a visitation visa, should be given a cow when they arrive. That way, if the government ever needs to find them when they forget to leave, they can.