OTTAWA, April 11 (Xinhuanet) -- A group of 100,00 farmers launched Monday a lawsuit against the Canadian federal government for negligently allowing mad cow disease to devastate the cattle industry, it is reported here.

    In the suit, farmers from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan accuse the government's federal monitoring program of losing track of 80 of out 191 imported cows it was supposed to track in case they developed signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

    "I don't know how you can lose 80 cows that you know may have mad-cow disease and, if it finds its way into a Canadian herd, will destroy the cattle industry," Toronto lawyer Cameron Pallett told the English newspaper The Globe and Mail.

    At least one cow imported from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s was eventually ground up into feed, infecting a number of cattle that ate the feed, according to the lawsuit.

    Ridley Corp. Ltd., the company that allegedly made the feed, is also named in the suit. The farmers allege that the company knew, or should have known, that its feed could be contaminated by BSE. Enditem