Sweden, Fighting Bird Flu, Gets First BSE Case
Date: 06-Mar-06
Country: SWEDEN
Author: Niklas Pollard and Simon Johnson
Evidence of the disease in Sweden comes just days after two wild ducks, suspected of having the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, were found dead on its southeast coast.
Cases of BSE, the human form of which has killed around 150 people, still occur around the world, but it is not as prevalent as in the 1990s.
"The laboratory in Great Britain confirmed on Friday that the cow previously suspected of carrying BSE, or mad cow's disease, really did have the disease," the National Veterinary Institute (SVA) said in a statement.
A preliminary test on Tuesday had indicated the brain wasting disease, which ravaged European cattle herds, in a 12-year old cow at a farm in Vastmanland in central Sweden.
The farm has been isolated since the case was discovered and all animals at risk will be destroyed, the SVA said.
"That Sweden should have a case of BSE is regrettable but despite everything not unexpected," Leif Denneberg, chief veterinarian at the Swedish Board of Agriculture said.
"The EU...had in its previous risk assessment designated Sweden as a country where it was unlikely, but not impossible, that BSE might occur."
Sweden will wait for a decision by the EU before extending its testing regime, Lena Hult, veterinary inspector at the Board of Agriculture said.
"I think this is an isolated case. We don't expect to find any more in this herd or in neighbouring herds," she said.
FIRST IN BRITAIN
BSE was first identified in Britain in the 1980s, devastating the country's beef industry. It has recently been found in Canada and the Netherlands. Japan recently re-imposed a ban on US beef over fears it could carry mad cow disease.
The 150 cases of the human variant of the illness, Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease, have been reported around the world, mostly in Britain, but also in France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United States.
The SVA said it could not rule out that the infected cow might have eaten contaminated fodder several years ago, before current security measures were in place. It could have been infected 10 years ago, the SVA said.
"I want to stress that this does not mean an increased danger in eating Swedish beef," Agriculture Minister Ann-Christin Nykvist said in a statement.
"Sweden has removed all hazardous parts of slaughtered animals since 1999."
Sweden has tested more than 170,000 animals for mad cow disease since 2001 without finding any cases of the disease, confirming that BSE is very rare here, the SVA said.
The European Commission said that it would reconsider in the coming days Sweden's exemption from BSE testing. Sweden currently has a special dispensation from EU rules requiring all bovine animals slaughtered for food to be tested.
"The likelihood is we'll have to take Sweden back in the testing regime," a spokesman of the EU executive said.
(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander in Brussels)
