News

The European Food Safety Agency EFSA has published a Scientific Opinion on the zoonotic potential of Scrapie in response to an earlier paper that had looked into the same issue (Comoy, E. E. et al. Transmission of scrapie prions to primate after an extended silent incubation period. Sci. Rep. 5, 11573; doi: 10.1038/srep11573 (2015)).

The EFSA report concludes that the paper cannot be regarded as providing evidence of the zoonotic potential for scrapie in field conditions.

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4197.htm

TAFS member Prof. Adriano Aguzzi explains latest research on how the flexible tail of the prion protein poisons brain cells.

Watch the video here.

The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) is reporting the first case of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Brazil and says that it "may be atypical". The affected animal was a beef breeding cow of almost 13 years of age at the time of death (December 2010).

Brazil is still recognized by the OIE as having a negligible BSE risk in accordance with Chapter 11.5. of the OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code.