It was on September 10, 2001, that mad cow disease began a crisis in the North American beef industry. On that day, almost unnoticed because of the terrorist attacks the next day on New York and Washington, Japan reported its first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in a cow in Chiba prefecture.

The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture said it suspected that the Holstein cow had been eating contaminated feed imported from Europe. Japan had banned feed from Europe earlier that year but by then it was too late.

"People in Japan stopped eating beef," Ernie Davis, an economist and livestock marketing expert at Texas A&M University told CBC.ca. "That's when U.S. exports crashed," dropping by about $400 million US in less than a year.

U.S. imports from Japan dropped to nothing at the same time.

According to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture foreign agriculture service

• U.S. beef exports to Japan totaled $1.24 billion US in 2001
• U.S. beef exports dropped to $831 million US in 2002.

In contrast, USDA figures show that beef exports from the U.S. to Canada are much less, worth $217.5 million US in 2001 and $217.7 million US in 2002.

Japan, the United States and Mexico banned imports of beef and cattle from Canada on May 20, 2003, when a single case of BSE was found in a cow in Alberta.

The ban is costing beef producers about $11 million Cdn a day.

Japan threatened to ban beef imports from the U.S. if it reopened the border to Canadian beef.

Japan wants all imported beef to be labelled with country of origin, which critics in Canada and the U.S. call a protectionist measure. Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief says it would be "impossible" to implement country of origin labelling because of the integration of the North American beef and cattle market.

Meanwhile, Japan's beef industry has taken another major hit of its own. In November 2003 it confirmed that a bull killed in October tested positive for BSE. The animal had been housed in a slaughterhouse in Hiroshima state in western Japan. It marked the ninth mad cow case for Japan since the illness was discovered in the country in 2001 and its second in less than a month.

Then, on December 23rd, 2003, the U.S. announced its first suspected case of BSE in a Holstein from Washington state.