Germany wants BSE sheep tests

29 December 2000



Germany wants BSE sheep tests

by FWi staff

GERMANY has called for sheep to be included in BSE tests after two more cases of the disease were discovered in cattle.

Politicians want to ensure that consumer anxieties about beef do not spread to lamb and mutton, reported the news agency Reuters.

German agriculture minister Karl-Heinz Funke has called for a European Union plan to examine the possibility that sheep could be linked to mad cow disease.

Earlier this year, Professor John Collinge of Britains Medical Research Council suggested that BSE could jump the species barrier without obvious symptoms.

Farmers dismissed the suggestion. But the Food Standards Agency has said that scrapie, a disease similar to BSE, could be masking the BSE in sheep.