Suspect sheep herd to be culled as a precaution

VETERINARY authorities said yesterday they would cull sheep in one herd after an outbreak of scrapie now being investigated for links with the brain-wasting mad cow disease.

The European Commission has ordered further tests on sheep in Cyprus and France after scrapie diagnosed in three samples carried an unusual molecular profile.

“We’ve decided the entire herd will have to be put down,” said veterinary services head George Neophytou.

“There is no danger to public health at all, but we have decided to do this to facilitate further research,” he said. Some 400 sheep were involved, he said.

An announcement from the European Commission on Thursday said that an expert panel from the Community Reference Laboratory (CRL) had informed the European Commission that test results from the brains of two sheep from France and one from Cyprus showed an unusual molecular profile that warranted further investigation.

While some data suggested the samples may not be BSE in sheep, there was insufficient evidence definitively to rule it out, the Commission said.
Scrapie and BSE are Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), a family of diseases characterised by a degeneration of brain tissue such as Creutzfeldt Jackob Disease in humans.

The next level of testing, recommended by the CRL expert panel and which has been requested by the Commission, will take between 12 and 18 months to complete.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.