SEVEN sheep infected with scrapie were slaughtered yesterday and their carcasses burnt in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease from a Paphos farm where the disease was diagnosed earlier this week.
An announcement from the Agricultural Department said the farm, one of the main sheep farms in the Paphos area, which is the main supplier of male breeding lambs for farms across the island, had been put under quarantine after the cases of scrapie had been diagnosed.
Andreas Orphanides of the Veterinary Services Department announced that animals sold to other farms over the past five years would now be traced and observed to determine how many might be infected.
Any animals showing symptoms of the disease will be slaughtered and tested for scrapie as a precaution.
Orphanides said the situation was serious, as the Department could not be sure how many animals might be infected across the island.
Scrapie is a fatal, infectious, wasting disease that affects the central nervous system of adult sheep and is suspected to be spread from ewe to offspring and to other lambs in contemporary lambing groups through contact with the placenta and placental fluids.
Government scientists yesterday again reassured the public that the disease could not be passed on to humans.
The feeding of scrapie-infected sheep to cattle is thought to have been one of the causes of the mad cow epidemic in Europe. Cyprus has so far avoided the mad cow and foot-and-mouth epidemics that have devastated farms elsewhere in Europe, especially Britain.
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