A NEW form of scrapie, the prion disease that affects sheep, could derail European Union plans to breed scrapie out of Europe’s flock.
Since 1998, Norway has been finding scrapie-positive sheep with prions and brain changes unlike normal scrapie. Meanwhile, an EU monitoring programme that started in 2002 has found that 20 per cent of the sheep and goats that tested positive for scrapie also have unusual prions.
Annick Le Dur and colleagues at the French National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) lab at Jouy-en-Josas have injected brain tissue from animals with scrapie into the brains of mice genetically modified…
