JANUARY 2018• COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
43 Scrapie eradication possible with certification program
BC has been free of scrapie since 1949, but risks remain
by BARBARA JOHNSTONE GRIMMER
VICTORIA – A program
available to any goat or sheep producer in Canada has the potential to eradicate scrapie, according to the Canadian Sheep Federation (CSF). “It has been a challenge to eradicate scrapie because animals may show no signs, there is no treatment and there is no live test,” explained Corlena Patterson, executive director of CSF, at the recent BC Sheep Symposium in Central Saanich this past fall. Scrapie is a neurological degenerative disease of small ruminants, sheep and goats caused by a prion-like protein. It is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and chronic wasting disease (CWD) of cervids. The prions accumulate over time. The Voluntary Scrapie Flock
Certification Program (VSFCP) is administered by the Canadian Sheep Federation for both goat and sheep producers. The goal is to eradicate scrapie from the national sheep flock and goat herd. The program aims to mitigate economic losses to producers, reduce the cost of disease control actions to Canadian sheep and goat industries and regain market access lost because of the BSE crisis of 2003. “To regain market access,
we must actively look and find zero cases seven years in a row and have import controls in place so we don’t import the disease,” says Patterson.
The eradication of scrapie is an issue worldwide. It is not only a federally reportable disease but also a reportable disease globally. Canada must report to the OIE, the World Organization for Animal
Health, regarding the incidence of disease and what is being done to control it. Most countries have scrapie control measures and this influences their import policies. Canada also has import restrictions related to scrapie.
Depopulation At the farm level, a scrapie
diagnosis will result in quarantine of the farm, blood- testing of animals and depopulating diseased and susceptible animals. Sheep can be genotyped for resistance to classical scrapie and only animals genotyped as susceptible will be humanely destroyed. If moderately resistant, animals are tested and if they are negative then they don’t destroy the animals. Goats do not have any known resistance genes although it is an area of active and promising research. Between 2008-2013, 4,075 animals were destroyed and 6,425 sent to slaughter in Canada. From 2013 to now, 1,800 sheep and 900 goats were destroyed and 3,000 sheep ordered slaughtered. A scrapie diagnosis for a flock or herd can impact several farms. In Ontario, a dispersal sale ended up dispersing the disease to many farms. A case in 1975 was traced to a goat on a sheep farm. A recent outbreak in a Manitoba goat herd was difficult to trace because of the various sources of the animals and the lack of identifiers or tags. In 2011, there was a link to BC from an Alberta case but the disease investigation did not find any positive cases of scrapie in BC. The Canadian Sheep Identification Program requires all sheep to be tagged with an approved identifier that assists with
Even though BC is scrapie-free, sheep and goat producers need to remain vigilent in their breeding selections and management to make sure it stays that way. LINDSAY BARTKO FILE PHOTO
tracebacks to the home farm. In the future, traceability regulations will require all animal movements to be recorded and reported to a central database to assist with disease investigations.
Disease-free
BC has been free of scrapie since 1949, when records were first kept. Sheep breeders have been selecting for resistant breeding stock by the genotyping for resistance to scrapie. Once a flock is genotyped, offspring can be selected carrying the resistant genotype to use for breeding and carrying the resistance over to their offspring. Research indicates that sheep have a prevalence of 0.08% or one case per 1,300 adults, while the prevalence rate in goats is 0.26% or one in 383 adults. The surveillance strategy is based on the Canadian national scrapie prevalence study. Surveillance consists of samples from federal and provincial abattoirs and
voluntary on-farm submissions. The program focuses on determining if a herd is scrapie-free and minimizing its risk of contracting the disease in the future.
The Canadian Food
Inspection Agency maintains the national standard and endorses VSFCP. CFIA deems certified animals at negligible risk for scrapie.
The strategy to eradicate scrapie involves reducing risks to farms by limiting additions to animals that have a similar
or higher health status, on- farm surveillance (testing all deadstock), and having a veterinarian visit once a year to conduct a health inventory. VSFCP is an effective,
robust and recognized disease control program. It takes five years to certify in Canada, seven years in US and OIE. The US uses the OIE system, based on depopulation and not selection for scrapie resistant genes. The combined system in Canada gives us an extra tool in the tool box.
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