Shipments of Canadian beef and beef by-products into Bermuda have been suspended due to the emergence of mad cow disease in Canada.

Bermuda authorities imposed the import ban yesterday following the discovery last week that a cow slaughtered in Alberta in January tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Cann said that Bermuda was following the actions of the US Food and Drug Administration.

"We are working with the Ministry of the Environment on this matter. We have taken a decision to restrict the importation of beef from Canada. As with the US FDA we are not taking any action with Canadian beef already here."

Eating beef infected with BSE is now believed to be a cause of Creudzfeldt Jacob Disease, a rare condition in humans which causes paralysis and death.

Local butchers said that BSE infected beef was very unlikely to have entered the food chain in Bermuda. Bermuda supermarkets import insignificant levels of fresh beef from Canada and the vast majority of the fresh beef sold here comes from the US.

A spokesperson for local importers Butterfield & Vallis said: "I am not aware that we source any fresh Canadian beef".

But he suggested that both US companies and Canadian food companies use Canadian beef for ready prepared meals.

Consequently, many frozen foods on the shelves in Bermuda may contain Canadian beef or beef products.

"But Bermudians are at low risk at this time" said the Butterfield & Vallis spokesperson.

The ban extends to all foods containing beef. However at the moment, supermarkets in Bermuda are not required to pull products containing Canadian beef off the shelves.

"There has been no recall at this point of time" said a MarketPlace spokesperson.

MarketPlace imports a large range of frozen foods from `Presidents Choice', a Canadian food producer, including some with beef ingredients. The spokesperson for MarketPlace said that the chain was still assessing the situation with the assistance of its health and sanitation officer.

"It's a major issue where Canadian products containing beef are concerned," he said, adding that only of small proportion of MarketPlace products fall into that category, but it would still be a large undertaking to remove them from the shelves if that was deemed necessary.

According to the Associated Press, the infected cow was slaughtered on January 31 but kept out of the food chain because it was believed to have pneumonia.

The head was sent to a provincial laboratory for routine testing. Because there was no suspicion of BSE then and the animal was not used for food, the sample had a low priority and was put in a backlog numbering hundreds for more than three months.

When testing indicated the possibility of mad cow disease, the samples were sent to a British laboratory that confirmed it on Tuesday.