BSE and Sheep Contingency Planning

Wednesday 9 November 2005

The views of stakeholders have been sought on the approach the agency should take in the event of BSE being found in the UK flock.

The general view of stakeholders was that there needed to be a graduated response dependent on the number of cases found and their geographical and temporal spread. The Agency�s current genotype based policy was consider proportionate only if there were a significant outbreak of BSE in sheep and that, if there were a single case, then a proportionate response would be to instigate increased testing to determine disease prevalence. The finding of a handful of cases was considered by many stakeholders to require the consideration of further measures, such as additional specified risk material controls, rather than an escalation to the genotype based approach and a possible mass cull.

In September the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) considered some preliminary data where two lambs in an experimental flock have acquired BSE from experimentally infected ewes. SEAC noted that further results will be needed to determine whether the transmission rate was sufficient to sustain an epidemic. They also confirmed that there is no evidence that BSE currently exists in the national flock.