It’s taken 18 years, but in May, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) recognized Canada as a negligible risk for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) says the change in risk status will help facilitate expanded access to foreign markets for various beef products currently limited by BSE-era restrictions.

BSE should really be a four-letter word.

It is to those who were traumatized during the economic disaster. The nightmare began in 2003 when the disease was confirmed in an Alberta cow. The United States quickly bolted its doors to Canadian cattle and beef, and other countries followed suit. Canada lost about 40 international markets.

Sources say between 100,000 and 130,000 beef and dairy producers bled financially between May 2003 and July 2005 when the American border finally re-opened. The CCA estimates the losses from 2003 to 2006 ranged from $4.9 billion to $5.5 billion. It says the industry lost more than 26,000 beef producers (and 2.22 million acres of pasture lands) between 2006 and 2011.

But Canadians – farmers, ranchers, veterinarians, and the government – worked together to ensure that its beef was safe. Measures that included surveillance, sampling and testing, livestock identification, specified risk material (SRM) controls, and the SRM feed ban were implemented. The safeguards protected the industry and complied with OIE regulations.

Canada’s endeavour to regain negligible risk status and global sales was disrupted in 2015 when BSE was confirmed in a six-year-old cow that had been born in 2009. To meet OIE criteria, there must be an 11-year hiatus since the birth of an infected domestic animal. That requirement has been met.

Ironically, while the World Organisation for Animal Health was voting, the long-awaited BSE class-action lawsuit was underway in Ontario.

Launched in 2005, it alleges the federal government was responsible for allowing BSE to be introduced into the national cattle herd and used in its feed supply. The suit represents all Canadian cattle producers adversely affected when the international borders closed on May 20, 2003.

The trial began in February and should end in June, but there’s no deadline for the judge’s written decision to be issued.

The disease left scars that haven’t completely healed, and its side effects remain. But CCA president Bob Lowe believes the OIE’s decision “is a historic closing of the BSE era for Canada.”

We’ll see.