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MADRID
(Reuters) - The regional government of Navarre said on
Tuesday it had detected Spain"s first outbreaks of
scrapie in sheep, a variant of mad cow disease that is
not believed to be transmissible to humans.
A
spokesman for the government of the northern region said
the problem was under control, with a herd of 2,200 sheep
having already been sacrificed and another 600 due to
be culled. "We have had cases...of scrapie in two
farms and they"re the first cases (in Spain) to be
publicly declared," Navarre agricultural spokesman
Javier Errea told Reuters. The newspaper El Pais reported
that there had been other cases in Spain, but they had
not been confirmed publicly. No one at the Agriculture
Ministry was available to comment.
Scrapie
is a variant of the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), the cattle brain-wasting disorder also known as
"mad cow disease," that has been blamed for
more than 79 human deaths in Britain alone. The European
Union said last week that BSE probably exists in cattle
in Spain, Germany and Italy, although those countries
deny the presence of the disease.
BSE
has yet to show up in sheep, but Professor Emmanuel Vanopdenbosch,
one of the European Union"s top scientists in the
subject, told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen last week:
"The BSE question with sheep is a time bomb that
continues to tick." Errea said the risk of the sheep
disease being passed on to cows and perpetuated had been
eradicated by a 1994 law banning the use of animal remains
in cattle feed. "In reality there is no reason for
concern," he said.
However
concerns that BSE may appear in sheep have recently been
highlighted by a case in Vermont in the United States
where four sheep tested positive for transmissible spongiform
encephalopathy (TSE), of which both scrapie and mad cow
disease are derivatives. Experts say it could take years
before it is known which form of TSE the Vermont sheep
had.
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