According to a group of lawyers representing Canadian cattle producers, the BSE crisis, the closing of the US border to Canadian cattle and beef, and the loss of billions of dollars by the Canadian cattle industry was the result of gross incompetence and negligence on the part of the Canadian Government. As a result of this the lawyers have begun legal proceedings against the government in an attempt to recoup some of the money lost by their clients.

The cattle producers, represented by Clint Docken, Q.C. of Calgary,

Reynold Robertson of Saskatoon, Gilles Gareau of Montreal and Cameron Pallett of Toronto, claim that Agriculture Canada failed to consider safety issues when compiling a list of permitted animal feed ingredients in 1988-1990 and lost track of 80 cattle that had been imported from the UK and Ireland, allowing them to be ground up into cattle feed. As a consequence, BSE infected a number of Canadian cattle, which in turn led to devastating consequences for the Canadian cattle industry.

"Two years after Great Britain banned the feeding of cattle remains to other cattle in 1988, Agriculture Canada enacted a Regulation specifically allowing it in Canada. Then, in 1990, they banned the importation of cattle from the UK and Ireland, and catalogued the 191 cattle imported since 1982", said Mr. Pallett. "Agriculture Canada then put those cattle into what they called a 'monitoring' program."

According to the plaintiffs, when Agriculture Canada decided to have a closer look at those cattle in December 1993 after one of them was found to have BSE, Department staff discovered that 80 of them had been turned into cattle feed which had been sold to Canadian cattle farmers. "By the government's own admission one or more of those 80 cattle are the most likely source of BSE in Canada," said Mr. Pallett.

In addition to the Federal Government, the claim also targets Ridley Corporation Limited, a multinational manufacturer of animal feeds. Ridley apparently stopped using cattle remains in their parent company's cattle feed in Australia in May of 1996, but continued to use cattle remains in their Canadian feed products until the practice was finally banned by the Government of Canada in August 1997.

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