A decision handed down by the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday afternoon that immediately ended the ban on importation of Canadian cattle into to the US due to fears of mad cow disease sent shares of Tyson Foods Inc. soaring on Friday morning.

The stock gained 7.5 percent, or $1.39 to trade at $19.91 on the New York Stock Exchange early in the day. Under the decision, Canadian cattle might begin to enter the US as early as the end of the summer, according to analysts.

Tyson said on Friday that it is waiting for information from the US Department of Agriculture for details of how and when the border will be reopened to cattle.

The company plans to resume importation of cattle as soon as practically possible. The ban, according to one analyst, had severely cut Tyson’s capacity because there just were not enough cattle to process. Tyson, the worlds largest chicken producer, began processing beef in 2001 and beef is now the largest proportion of its business.

Before the ban, the US had imported about 2 million head of cattle per year from Canada, approximately 8 percent of the cattle slaughtered in the US annually. The ban on importation came in May 2003 after traces of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, were discovered in a cow born in Alberta.