Mad cow disease 'non-negative' test reported on Feb. 6

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says little morethan a week passed from the time the most recent case of mad cow disease was first suspected to when it was confirmed and nationaltrading partners were notified.

A timeline of the case at an Alberta farm has been released onthe agency's website.

The website says a private veterinarian took samples on Feb.4 at the undisclosed farm and submitted them to a provincial lab.

It says they were tested on February 6 and the lab recorded a"non-negative" test result.

The lab repeated the test the following day with the same findingand reported the case to the CFIA, where the agency conducted itsown test in Lethbridge, Alta, to confirm the result.

The CFIA says it started gathering information on the animal'sherd on Tuesday, officially confirmed the case on Wednesday andposted the case to its website and notified Canada's tradingpartners on Thursday.

"The CFIA is currently investigating the finding. Part of thatinvestigation will seek to uncover the history of the animal and howit may have become infected," the agency's website states.

It's the first case to be reported in Canada since 2011 when a six-year-old dairy cow tested positive.

The CFIA has said part of its investigation will focus on theanimal's feed during its first year of life.

Officials have said they don't know yet how old the animal was,but they said no part of the animal's carcass entered the human foodor animal feed systems.

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Friday that the infectedanimal was not born on the farm where it was discovered.

Ritz also said the discovery won't affect Canada's internationalbeef trade because it won't change the county's controlled BSE riskstatus from the World Organization for Animal Health. He said Canadahas stayed below international protocols that allow for up to adozen BSE cases a year.

Humans who eat infected beef can develop a fatal disease calledvariant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Fewer than 250 human cases havebeen reported worldwide.