NZ sheep found with atypical scrapie
Posted by te2ataria on October 28, 2009
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Global Food Safety Alert Bulletin # 31 –
Warning: Do NOT Consume NZ Meat or Dairy Products
Deadly New Zealand Meat and Farm Produce Enter Nightmare Level
Belgian Food Scientists Find NZ Sheep with Atypical Scrapie
Atypical scrapie, also known as Nor 98, a brain condition, has been found by Belgian food specialist in a sheep’s brain reportedly sent from New Zealand for tests.
New Zealand biosecurity “food safety and trade officials” say atypical scrapie is not exactly the same as the classical scrapie brain disease.
They said there were no implications for human health, or livestock “wastage” and there should not be any trade repercussions — as long as there was no confusion between the brain disease, classical scrapie, which is not found in New Zealand, and the condition, atypical scrapie.
[However, the blog challenges the New Zealand biosecurity officials to eat parts of the infected animals on a live TV show to prove their point!]
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry principal international adviser on animal health Dr Stuart MacDiarmid said the detection did not change New Zealand’s status of being scrapie-free.
[If that doesn’t, then nothing would!!]
“Every country that has conducted sufficient surveillance for atypical scrapie/Nor 98 has found it in their flocks,” he said.
This included most countries in Scandinavia and the European Union, Britain, and North America.
“There is no evidence that atypical scrapie/Nor 98 can be transmitted naturally to other animals or to people, or that it in any way affects people,” he said.
However, the disease has been transmitted between species in laboratory tests when infected tissue was injected into another animal’s brain.
Earlier this year it was reported two Cheviot sheep sent to Britain as part of a New Zealand flock, and a ewe born to two other Cheviots in the “closed” flock and kept from contact with overseas sheep, had developed atypical scrapie.
In February 2009 the British scientists reported that the disease most likely originated from within the New Zealand flock, which meant that New Zealand animals most probably had the atypical scrapie.
Source: NZPA via Yahoo News/ other informed sources
Related Links:
Zombie Democracy - Apartheid Fort NZ 
Global Food Safety Warning: Atypical Scrapie Found in NZ Sheep « Fire Earth said
[…] Deadly New Zealand Meat and Farm Produce Enter Nightmare Level […]
BammBamm said
NZ refuses to implement track and trace.
There have been a number of nvCJD deaths in NZ. These have been covered up.
Currently it is rumoured that there are two farms in North Canterbury that are under quarantine by MAF pending the testing of all livestock with immunological testing reagents (www.prionics.com) to determine the spread of this disease.
It may be atypical scrapie, or a new form of the protein. The protein shape shifts and propagates in a new host species using the endogenous expression for host protein.
Canterbury has had a long history of problems with Scrapie.
A new form of CWD is spreading in the USA. It will arrive here, and once established within the wild animal population will be impossible to remove.
There is no cure, and the disease is fatal. It is usually identified by electron microscopy, however no lab will let a sample in.