Alberta has started a scrapie surveillance program to determine the prevalence and location of the disease in sheep and goats.
Alberta is not believed to have scrapie but this study will provide a database of information, said Herman Ortegon, part of the province’s livestock disease surveillance team.
“If there is a positive, we want to know our prevalence,” said Ortegon at the Alberta sheep symposium Nov. 16. “We want this to be a baseline study.”
Some limited studies have been done since 2000, but they did not provide enough information for scrapie-free certification programs. No positive cases were found.
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These programs may be requested by trading partners like the United States, South America and Japan.
Producers can send heads or whole carcasses to Alberta Agriculture laboratories in Lethbridge, Airdrie, Fairview and Edmonton. They will be paid $50 for the carcass. There is no fee for heads. Eligible carcasses should be from animals at least one year old and should not be badly decomposed.
A national surveillance program requires producers to submit samples for testing or go the genetic route searching for susceptible genes in purebred animals. Producers participating in the federal program may submit samples in Alberta and receive credit.
Scrapie is among the family of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies caused by abnormal prions. Similar forms of the terminal disease have been found in cattle, cats, mink, deer, elk and humans. It has been a reportable disease in Canada since 1945 and it has been known for more than 200 years.
Clinical signs of scrapie show up in animals one to five years of age depending on when they were exposed to it. Most die before the age of five.
Symptoms include behavioral changes, repeated itching and pulling out wool, nose licking, weight loss and abnormal gait. Some sheep die without showing symptoms.
Animals may pick the disease up from ingesting prions in placental fluid, which then migrate to the lymph nodes.
