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Where's the beef?

Canadian Business Magazine: "An Edmonton physician has a simple test for mad cow disease. Problem is, nobody wants it

You must forgive Dr. Sorin Musat-Marcu, the president of a small Edmonton-based biotech firm, if he sounds a bit frustrated about how Canada has handled its mad cow crisis. Several years ago, Musat-Marcu's company, HistoBest Inc., came up with a better way to enhance food safety: an efficient method for testing and banking animal tissue samples. The doctor's relatively cheap system could even diagnose several serious diseases, including mad cow--and all within 48 hours.

For more than two years, Musat-Marcu shopped his innovative technology around, but nobody in government or industry took much interest. Then, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, struck Canada, and now both industry and government are floundering for solutions. 'The truth should go out,' says Musat-Marcu. 'I won't back off.'

What the truth apparently boils down to, from HistoBest's perspective, is truly maddening: it doesn't always pay to build a better mousetrap when the mouse in question is actually a mad cow. Based on lengthy correspondence with government officials, Musat-Marcu is now fairly convinced that the BSE crisis is a veritable Pandora's box. 'If we do some proper testing, we will find a couple of hundred infected cows and nobody wants that,' he says. 'They want to keep the lid on this.'

Musat-Marcu decries what he views as false science in government and media circles, and believes over-testing is the only way out of an ugly trade debacle, which has seen Canadian beef banned in the United States, Japan and several other countries. And every time he hears a government official say that BSE is just an animal health issue, he cringes. 'Consumers have the right to know,' says Musat-Marcu. 'More than 140 Europeans have died, and they will continue dying for years to come. I'm very frustrated.'"

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