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This article focuses on the issue of mad cow disease in Canada and speculates on why more isn't being done to deal with the problem. Recent disclosures of more mad cows in our midst raise the nagging question of why Canada is not doing far more to screen the nation's cattle herds for the dreaded bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease. The reason we're seeing more confirmed BSE cases is that surveillance is on the upswing, with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency this year testing 30,000 slaughtered cows for BSE, up from 5,490 in 2003. But that's still a rather thin slice, when you consider the Canadian beef industry slaughters over three million animals annually. Long before the first Canadian-born mad cow surfaced in May 2003, independent scientists who study brain-wasting conditions -- including BSE and its equally fatal human offshoot, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) -- were urging federal authorities to pre-emptively step up surveillance. David Westaway believes Canada should follow Europe's lead and test all slaughtered cows over 30 months (older cattle are more likely to show signs of BSE). As for being too expensive, a survey released last year of BSE tests in Europe and the U.S. pegged the per-animal cost at between $30 and $55.