# 'Mad cow' disease found in goat



## Hamilton Reef (Jan 20, 2000)

This is off the deer topic, but you may hear about this in genral conversations.

'Mad cow' disease found in goat 
A French goat has tested positive for mad cow disease - the first animal in the world other than a cow to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The animal, which was slaughtered in 2002, was initially thought to have scrapie, a similar brain-wasting condition sometimes seen in goats. But British scientists have now confirmed the disease was in fact BSE.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4216431.stm


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## Ranger Ray (Mar 2, 2003)

Bad news for sure.


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## terry (Sep 13, 2002)

BSE TO GOAT CONFIRMED UNDER NATURAL CONDITIONS

1ST, FYI, some old data ;


Like lambs to the slaughter

* 31 March 2001
* Debora MacKenzie
* Magazine issue 2284


Suspect symptoms


What if you can catch old-fashioned CJD by eating meat from a sheep infected with scrapie?

Exclusive from New Scientist magazine


Four years ago, Terry Singeltary watched his mother die horribly from a degenerative brain disease. Doctors told him it was Alzheimer's, but Singeltary was suspicious. The diagnosis didn't fit her violent symptoms, and he demanded an autopsy. It showed she had died of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.


Photo: Murdo McLeod

Most doctors believe that sCJD is caused by a prion protein deforming by chance into a killer. But Singeltary thinks otherwise.

He is one of a number of campaigners who say that some sCJD, like the variant CJD related to BSE, is caused by eating meat from infected animals. Their suspicions have focused on sheep carrying scrapie, a BSE-like disease that is widespread in flocks across Europe and North America.

Now scientists in France have stumbled across new evidence that adds weight to the campaigners' fears. To their complete surprise, the researchers found that one strain of scrapie causes the same brain damage in mice as sCJD.

"This means we cannot rule out that at least some sCJD may be caused by some strains of scrapie," says team member Jean-Philippe Deslys of the French Atomic Energy Commission's medical research laboratory in Fontenay-aux-Roses, south-west of Paris.

Hans Kretschmar of the University of GÃ¶ttingen, who coordinates CJD surveillance in Germany, is so concerned by the findings that he now wants to trawl back through past sCJD cases to see if any might have been caused by eating infected mutton or lamb.


Brain damage


Scrapie has been around for centuries and until now there has been no evidence that it poses a risk to human health. But if the French finding means that scrapie can cause sCJD in people, countries around the world may have overlooked a CJD crisis to rival that caused by BSE.

Deslys and colleagues were originally studying vCJD, not sCJD. They injected the brains of macaque monkeys with brain from BSE cattle, and from French and British vCJD patients. The brain damage and clinical symptoms in the monkeys were the same for all three. Mice injected with the original sets of brain tissue or with infected monkey brain also developed the same symptoms.

As a control experiment, the team also injected mice with brain tissue from people and animals with other prion diseases: a French case of sCJD; a French patient who caught sCJD from human-derived growth hormone; sheep with a French strain of scrapie; and mice carrying a prion derived from an American scrapie strain.

As expected, they all affected the brain in a different way from BSE and vCJD. But while the American strain of scrapie caused different damage from sCJD, the French strain produced exactly the same pathology.


Multiple strains


"The main evidence that scrapie does not affect humans has been epidemiology," says Moira Bruce of the neuropathogenesis unit of the Institute for Animal Health in Edinburgh, who was a member of the same team as Deslys.

"You see about the same incidence of the disease everywhere, whether or not there are many sheep, and in countries such as New Zealand with no scrapie," she says. In the only previous comparisons of sCJD and scrapie in mice, Bruce found they were dissimilar.

But there are more than 20 strains of scrapie, and six of sCJD. "You would not necessarily see a relationship between the two with epidemiology if only some strains affect only some people," says Deslys. Bruce is cautious about the mouse results, but agrees they require further investigation. Other trials of scrapie and sCJD in mice, she says, are in progress.


Deformed proteins


People can have three different genetic variations of the human prion protein, and each type of protein can fold up two different ways. Kretschmar has found that these six combinations correspond to six clinical types of sCJD: each type of normal prion produces a particular pathology when it spontaneously deforms to produce sCJD.

But if these proteins deform because of infection with a disease-causing prion, the relationship between pathology and prion type should be different, as it is in vCJD. "If we look at brain samples from sporadic CJD cases and find some that do not fit the pattern," says Kretschmar, "that could mean they were caused by infection."

There are 250 deaths per year from sCJD in the US, and a similar incidence elsewhere. Singeltary and other US activists think that some of these people died after eating contaminated meat or "nutritional" pills containing dried animal brain.

Governments will have a hard time facing activists like Singeltary if it turns out that some sCJD isn't as spontaneous as doctors have insisted.

Deslys's work on macaques also provides further proof that the human disease vCJD is caused by BSE. And the experiments showed that vCJD is much more virulent to primates than BSE, even when injected into the bloodstream rather than the brain. This, says Deslys, means that there is an even bigger risk than we thought that vCJD can be passed from one patient to another through contaminated blood transfusions and surgical instruments.

More at: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol 98, p 4142)

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/041490898v1

Correspondence about this story should be directed to [email protected]

1900 GMT, 28 March 2001


* New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999560


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg16922840.300


TSS


EFSA provides update on plans to assess the safety of goat meat and goat meat products with regard to BSE/TSE
Last updated: 31 January 2005

The European Food Safety Authoritys (EFSA) Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) provided an update today on its plans to assess possible risks associated with the consumption of goat meat. The BIOHAZ Panel has undertaken this work following findings of a research group in France concerning a suspected case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) infection in a goat, confirmed today by the Community Reference Laboratory (CRL). On 26 November 2004, EFSA published a statement on the safety of goat milk and derived products with regard to possible risks from BSE/TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy).

* 35 kB Press release


http://www.efsa.eu.int/press_room/press_release/790/efsapr_bsegoat_28012005_en3.pdf


EFSA provides update on plans to assess the safety of

goat meat and goat meat products with regard to BSE/TSE

The European Food Safety Authoritys (EFSA) Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) provided an update today on its plans to assess possible risks associated with the consumption of goat meat. The BIOHAZ Panel has undertaken this work following findings of a research group in Franceconcerning a suspected case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) infection in a goat, confirmed today by the Community Reference Laboratory (CRL)[1] . On 26 November 2004, EFSA published a statement on the safety of goat milk and derived products with regard to possible risks from BSE/TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy)[2] . The BIOHAZ Panel reaffirmed today that important information gaps do not allow, at this stage, the quantification of BSE-related risks with regard to the consumption of goat meat. The Panel stresses that the significance of this single case of BSE infection in a goat in Franceis yet to be assessed. In order to do so, the results of the increased monitoring of TSEs in goats as proposed by the European Commission[3] will be essential. The BIOHAZ Panels ability to carry out a quantitative risk assessment will be determined by the availability of the monitoring results and further experimental and epidemiological data. The success of its work will also depend on access to unpublished findings from MemberStatesand third countries. EFSA will review progress with members of its Advisory Forum at a meeting scheduled next week following a call for data launched in November 2004. The BIOHAZ Panel expects to provide further advice relating to the safety of goat meat and goat meat products by July 2005.

The full text of the statement of the BIOHAZ Panel on the assessment of safety with respect to the consumption of goat meat and goat meat products in relation to BSE/TSE is available on the EFSA website at:

http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/biohaz/biohaz_documents/787_en.html

http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/biohaz/biohaz_documents/787/statement25-01-2005bsegoatfinal2.pdf

For media enquiries, please contact:

Carola Sondermann, Senior Press Officer

Tel: +32 2 337 2294

[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

Or

Anne-Laure Gassin, EFSA Communications Director,

Tel : +32 2 337 2248

GSM: +32 478 330 19 68

[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

For more background information about the European Food Safety Authority, go to: http://www.efsa.eu.int/

_________________________________

[1]
http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/food/biosafety/bse/crl_statement_tse_goats_28-01-05_en.pdf


[2]
Statement of the EFSA Scientific Expert Working Group on BSE/TSE of the Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards on the health risks of the consumption of milk and milk derived products from goats.
http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/biohaz/biohaz_documents/709/bdoc_statement_goatsmilk_en1.pdf

[3]
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressRel...format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en


Publication date: 28 January 2005

http://www.efsa.eu.int/press_room/press_release/790_en.html

PLEASE do not let the urls below fool you.
THE data is accurate. I knew this was to come
about years ago and got the official exports
of UK goat and sheep to world for documentation...TSS

TSS UPDATE ON TSE IN GOAT AND SHEEP TO HUMANS
MINUS THE POLITICS ;

http://www.vegsource.com/talk/madcow/messages/93965.html

UK SHEEP AND GOAT EXPORT TO WORLD MARKETS

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/sheep_exports.htm


TSS


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## terry (Sep 13, 2002)

Date: February 08, 2005 Time: 12:45

POSSIBLE BSE IN A 1990 UK GOAT SAMPLE

Scientists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency have informed Defra that a goat, confirmed as having scrapie in 1990, may have had BSE.

More sensitive testing methods have found the sample had traits similar to samples from goats experimentally infected with BSE. Further tests will now be carried out.

The VLA made the finding following the recent case of BSE in a goat from France. The VLA had been checking whether methods developed to discriminate between scrapie and BSE in sheep could also differentiate these diseases in a goat.

The goat appears to have originated from premises in Scotland; investigations have revealed that the original keeper is no longer in business at these premises.

The single result, using just one test method, is insufficient to confirm that the goat had BSE, and further rapid molecular methods to discriminate BSE and scrapie cannot be applied because no frozen tissues are available.

Researchers from the VLA have been asked to carry out tests to follow up these initial findings. Further work will now need to be performed and this will take 1-2 years, at the earliest, to complete.

Defra's Chief Veterinary Officer, Debby Reynolds, said: "It is important to put this initial finding into context. It dates back to 1990 which was at the height of the BSE outbreak in cattle and before the reinforced feed ban was introduced in 1996. This means that there is a distinct possibility that the animal, if infected with BSE, was exposed to contaminated feed.

"In light of the recent case of BSE in a goat from France, the European Commission says it is important to perform increased surveillance on goats on a European-wide basis to establish the current incidence of TSEs in the goat population. In line with this, Defra will be stepping up its TSE surveillance programme for goats."

Defra will be asking the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee for their comments on this finding at their meeting on the 3rd March.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Further details about the case of BSE in a French goat detected in 2002 can be found on the European Commission's web site at:- http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressRel...format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

2. More details concerning the feed ban is available on the Defra web site:-
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/controls-eradication/feed-ban.html

3. General information relating to BSE can be found at:- http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/index.html

4. General information relating to scrapie can be found at:- http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/othertses/scrapie/index.html

Public enquiries 08459 335577;
Press notices are available on our website
www.defra.gov.uk
Defra's aim is sustainable development

End

Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR
Telephone 020 7238 1134
Website www.defra.gov.uk

http://www.wired-gov.net/WGLaunch.aspx?ARTCL=29707

58/05

8 February 2005


POSSIBLE BSE IN A 1990 UK GOAT SAMPLE

Scientists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency have informed Defra that a goat, confirmed as having scrapie in 1990, may have had BSE.

More sensitive testing methods have found the sample had traits similar to samples from goats experimentally infected with BSE. Further tests will now be carried out.

The VLA made the finding following the recent case of BSE in a goat from France. The VLA had been checking whether methods developed to discriminate between scrapie and BSE in sheep could also differentiate these diseases in a goat.

The goat appears to have originated from premises in Scotland; investigations have revealed that the original keeper is no longer in business at these premises.

The single result, using just one test method, is insufficient to confirm that the goat had BSE, and further rapid molecular methods to discriminate BSE and scrapie cannot be applied because no frozen tissues are available.

Researchers from the VLA have been asked to carry out tests to follow up these initial findings. Further work will now need to be performed and this will take 1-2 years, at the earliest, to complete.

Defra's Chief Veterinary Officer, Debby Reynolds, said: "It is important to put this initial finding into context. It dates back to 1990 which was at the height of the BSE outbreak in cattle and before the reinforced feed ban was introduced in 1996. This means that there is a distinct possibility that the animal, if infected with BSE, was exposed to contaminated feed.

"In light of the recent case of BSE in a goat from France, the European Commission says it is important to perform increased surveillance on goats on a European-wide basis to establish the current incidence of TSEs in the goat population. In line with this, Defra will be stepping up its TSE surveillance programme for goats."

Defra will be asking the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee for their comments on this finding at their meeting on the 3 March.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes for editors

1. Further details about the case of BSE in a French goat detected in 2002 can be found on the European Commission's website at: http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressRel...format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en <http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/105&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en>.

2. More details concerning the feed ban is available on the Defra website: www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/controls-eradication/feed-ban.html <http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/controls-eradication/feed-ban.html>.

3. General information relating to BSE can be found at: www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/index.html <http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/index.html>.

4. General information relating to scrapie can be found at: www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/othertses/scrapie/index.html <http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/othertses/scrapie/index.html>.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2005/050208a.htm


Possible case of BSE agent in a UK goat that died in 1990

Editorial team ([email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>), Eurosurveillance editorial office

Following the confirmation in January 2005 of a French goat having a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy indistinguishable from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) [1,2], the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced that a goat in the United Kingdom (UK), confirmed as having scrapie in 1990, may have had BSE [3].

More sensitive testing methods have found that a sample from the goat had traits similar to goats experimentally infected with BSE. However, this single result is insufficient to confirm that the goat did have BSE. Further testing, including bioassays, which take around 2 years to complete, are now necessary.

The year 1990 was the height of the BSE outbreak in cattle in the UK. A ban on feeding meat and bone meal to ruminants was introduced across the European Union in 1994. The TSE surveillance programme of sheep and goats will be increased in the United Kingdom, in line with the announced increases across the European Union.

The European Community TSE Reference Laboratory at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/vla/science/science-tse-rl-intro.htm) will complete the testing.

References:

1. Eurosurveillance. BSE agent in goat tissue: first known naturally
occurring case confirmed. Euro Surveill 2005; 10(1): Epub 3
February 2005. (http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ew/2005/050203.asp#1)
2. European Commission. Case of BSE in a goat confirmed: Commission
extends testing programme. Press release IP/05/105, 28 January
2005.
(http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressRel...format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=fr
<http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/105&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=fr>)

3. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Possible BSE
in a 1990 UK goat sample. Press release 58/05, 8 February 2005.
(http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2005/050208a.htm)


Tissue distribution of bovine spongiform encephalopathy infectivity in Romney sheep up to the onset of clinical disease after oral challenge

Sixty Romney sheep of three prion protein genotypes were dosed orally at six months of age with an inoculum prepared from the brains of cattle clinically affected with BSE, and 15 sheep were left undosed as controls. They were randomly assigned within genotype to groups and were sequentially euthanased and examined postmortem at intervals of six or 12 months, depending on their predicted susceptibility. Tissue pools prepared from the three, four or five dosed animals in each group were inoculated into groups of 20 RIII mice as a bioassay for infectivity. Separate inocula were prepared from the matched control sheep killed at each time. In the ARQ/ARQ sheep killed four months after inoculation, infectivity was detected in the Peyer's patch tissue pool, and at 10 months it was detected in the spleen pool; from 16 months, infectivity was detected in a range of nervous and lymphoreticular tissues, including the spinal cord pool, distal ileum excluding Peyer's patches, liver, Peyer's patches, mesenteric and prescapular lymph nodes, spleen, tonsil and cervical thymus. No infectivity was detected in the tissue pools from the ARQ/ARR and ARR/ARR sheep killed 10 months or 22 months after infection.

http://www.vetrecord.co.uk/abs1033.htm



British goat may have harboured BSE

* 18:34 08 February 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* Debora MacKenzie

A British goat which died in 1990 may have had BSE, UK government officials revealed on Tuesday. The discovery means the infection may have circulated in goats in the past, and may even be circulating at low levels today.

This follows the recent disclosure of the first natural case of BSE to be found in a goat - a French animal that died in 2002. New Scientist has learned that the British goat was discovered as a result of the French case, as UK government scientists prepared for the increased testing of goats after the discovery.

It has long been assumed that sheep and goats may have been exposed to BSE in feed made from infected cattle. But unlike cattle, both creatures can transmit such infections between individuals, which might have kept the disease circulating after infected feed was banned.

BSE in sheep and goats would also be hard to spot, as both can naturally develop a similar disease called scrapie which has the same symptoms, although it is not thought to pose a risk to human consumers. And, unlike cattle, sheep experimentally infected with BSE carry the infectious prion in muscle meat, so the infection in sheep and goats could pose more of a risk to consumers.

For these reasons European Union countries have been testing sheep and goats for BSE since 2002. These tests discovered the infected French goat.



Telling the difference

"We were involved in helping evaluate the French data in December," says Danny Matthews of the UK's Veterinary Laboratories Agency, the EU reference lab for BSE. It was clear that the EU would probably ask for increased testing in goats as a result, he says.

In fact, from February, 80% of healthy slaughtered goats over the age of 18 months, plus "high risk" goats such as those found dead or unable to stand, should be tested, officials have just agreed. Three different test methods - called western blot, ELISA and immunohistochemistry (IHC) - will be used to distinguish scrapie from BSE.

"We haven't had to test many goats in the UK," says Matthews. "But we thought we should test our current IHC on goat brain to make sure it distinguishes BSE." Besides goats and sheep experimentally infected with scrapie or BSE, they tested two brain samples from goats thought to have died of scrapie.

One of them gave an IHC result that looked like BSE. "We can't do the other two tests as we processed all the tissue we had from that animal for IHC," says Matthews. But the team will nevertheless attempt to extract enough tissue from the IHC test material to do the definitive BSE test. This involves injecting tissue into mouse brain to see if BSE develops. But that will not yield results for two years.

"What is important now is not what happened back in 1990, but whether the infection is still circulating in goats," notes Matthews.


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6987


TSS


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