The infected goat was born in March 2000 and slaughtered in France in October 2002. The results are only now becoming available as the series of confirmatory tests included testing on mice (a so-called “mouse bioassay”), which takes two years to complete. The goat and its herd were disposed of in accordance with European Union (EU) rules and did not enter either the food or feed chain and therefore do not represent a risk to public health. This goat was detected as part of the EU wide surveillance program designed to detect suspicious transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) strains in small ruminants, and was the only one in its herd of 300 goats to develop BSE.
For many years, safety measures have been applied to all farmed ruminants (cattle, goats, sheep) in the EU to offer maximum public health protection in case BSE in goats was ever confirmed. These safety measures include the ban on feeding animal proteins in the form of meat and bone meal, the removal of specified risk materials (tissues such as brain, spinal cord, part of the intestines) from the food and feed chain, the slaughtering of herds affected by scrapie (a disease of goats and sheep similar to BSE but not infectious for humans), and a TSE monitoring and testing program in all EU member states. Over 140,000 goats have been tested since April 2002, including random testing of healthy animals, sick animals, and those that die on the farm.
Following this confirmation, the Commission is proposing increased testing for BSE among goats for at least six months, equating to 200,000 tests of healthy goats in the EU, to determine if this is an isolated incident. The extent of the monitoring program will be based on the goat population in each member state and will focus primarily on member states where BSE is present in the cattle population. All confirmed TSE cases will be subjected to a three-step testing scheme already in use, which will make it possible to differentiate between scrapie and BSE.
The conditions that existed when the affected goat was born in 2000 no longer exist and available evidence would suggest that even if the infection still exists in goats, the level would be extremely low. The feeding of meat and bone meal to ruminants is generally considered to be the transmission route of BSE. In January 2001, the existing EU ban on feeding meat and bone meal to all ruminants was extended to a total ban on feeding meat and bone meal to all farmed animals. Goats in the EU generally only live for a few years, which means that the majority of goats in the EU today were born after the total feed ban was put in place.
April 2005 Render