WHERE'S THE BEEF?

Shortly after bidding opened, word began to spread in the cattle auction house in Olds, Alta. that a single cow in northern Alberta, already dead for nearly four months, had been identified as suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), better known as mad cow disease. By week's end, the search for clues into how a black Angus breeder cow became infected with the dreaded brain-wasting disease had forced 13 Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. farms into quarantine, with more expected to follow. All 150 head of cattle at the cow's last home, a farm in northwestern Alberta, were sent for slaughter so the animals' brains could be tested for BSE. Politicians and federal health officials were quick to insist that no such risk to humans existed in Canada as a result of last week's developments. The breeder cow, they noted, was effectively removed from the food chain on Jan. 31, after a provincial inspector at an Alberta abattoir noticed it looked underweight and deemed it to be suffering from pneumonia. While the breeder cow had been removed from the food chain, officials could not say, with equal certainty, that the same was true for its offspring, some of which remained unaccounted for at week's end. Nor could they rule out the possibility that other animals had been infected with BSE. A prolonged mad cow scare could also spook Alberta's $5-billion-a year tourist industry, perhaps doing for the mountain resort towns of Banff and Jasper what SARS has done to Toronto.