New Zealand and UK seek facts on new sheep disease

Biosecurity officials were seeking details from animal scientists today after reports that a new form of brain disease scrapie had been discovered in a New Zealand research sheep in Britain.

The Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Britain, New Zealand’s most important lamb-export market, said the atypical form of scrapie had been detected in a six-year-old cheviot ewe sheep.

This was despite the ewe’s scrapie-free New Zealand-raised parents having been kept in strict quarantine since they were sent to Britain in 1998 and 2001.

“They have no idea how this animal got atypical scrapie,” said Biosecurity New Zealand assistant director-general Barry O’Neill.

The “number of ways” the ewe could have been infected would be checked by the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra).

O’Neill said New Zealand was free of the classic form of scrapie and had found no evidence of atypical scrapie.

Neither animal brain disease is considered a risk to human health.