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Better Farming Ontario magazine is published 11 times per year. After each edition is published, we share featured articles online.


Latest scrapie results for quarantined Northumberland farm published

Thursday, May 3, 2012

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Nine sheep taken from a Northumberland County farm April 28 have tested negative for scrapie, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed.

The agency originally found the disease April 27 after testing a six-year-old ewe that had died on the farm a week earlier. Montana Jones, who owns the farm, challenged that test result in a May 3 email, noting the ewe “showed no symptoms of the disease.” She’s asked the agency for DNA and tissue samples so she can arrange testing by a third party.

Guy Gravelle, the agency’s senior media relations officer, confirmed the most-recent test results Thursday evening. Earlier the same day, the agency posted a statement on its website signed by Brian Evans, Canada’s chief veterinary officer, that discussed the importance of taking a science-based approach to control of the disease, which can be fatal to sheep and goats.

All cases of the disease must be reported to the agency, which in turn must notify the World Organization for Animal Health of confirmed cases, he writes. “Like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), scrapie is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy,” he states. “The disease is extremely difficult to detect” and the only way to confirm it is through tests conducted on brain tissue. “Because of these realities, premises are placed under strict quarantine when the disease is suspected and potentially infected and high risk animals are humanely destroyed.”

Jones could not be reached today for comment.

The farm has been under quarantine since 2010 when the disease was discovered in a sheep born on Jones’ farm and subsequently sold to an Alberta farm. In April, 31 sheep vanished from Jones’ farm just before they were to be destroyed by the agency. A printed note found in the barn claimed a group named the Farmers’ Peace Corps had taken the animals. Provincial police are investigating.

Karen Selick, litigation director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation who has been representing Jones, said in April that the farmer did not arrange the animals’ disappearance. Jones had objected to the agency’s planned course of action, arguing her sheep were healthy.

In a May 4 letter to the editor, industry organizations, including the Ontario Sheep marketing Agency, Ontario Goat, the Canadian Sheep Federation, the Canadian Sheep Breeders Association and the Canadian Livestock Genetics Association warned that moving “potentially diseased animals during their greatest period of infectivity risks spreading the disease to an even larger number of animals.” Many of the vanished ewes were scheduled to give birth in a few weeks and contact with birthing fluids is a common way the disease is spread.

The groups explain that how well the disease is controlled directly affects the Canadian industry’s ability to trade: “Interfering with that process jeopardizes the strides made towards domestic and international confidence in our animal health programs.”

Evans states that while there is currently no evidence that scrapie can affect people, Health Canada recommends preventing infected animals from entering the human food supply.

Better Farming will have in-depth coverage of this issue in its June/July magazine issue. BF

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