The Canadian government has their own answer. Canadian cattle sold must soon wear an ear-tag to make it easier to track down the source of any disease. The Canadian Cattle Identification program, which went into effect this month, will see most of the four million calves born annually pierced with a tag carrying a unique I.D. number whenever they leave their herd of origin. But the system is full of loop holes. However, it does not include milk, blood, gelatin, rendered animal fat or their products.
Most experts believe it is too little too late.
According to the World Health Organization, meat and animal feed infected with mad cow disease may have been sold across the globe for decades, raising the possibility of outbreaks well beyond Europe. For instance, Brazilian beef was recently banned from the North American markets because their cattle were the descendants of herds shipped from Britain some ten years earlier. Maura Ricketts, a WHO specialist, said it was almost impossible to trace where suspect meat or feed might have gone since mad cow disease was first identified in Britain in 1986. Neither is how cattle feed moves around the world. We didn t think that it would make human beings ill.