Originally from: frances fish
                        
My apologies, you DO need to have had a sheep diagnosed with scrapie to qualify for this scheme. Reports are out of a "new" form of scrapie in a 4 year old sheep. This only goes to prove, as like the last time when Defra started looking more closely at the condition, just how little they actually know about it. Certainly they are not in a position to inform anyone else or even advise but apparently that does not stop them wishing to eradicate animals without the "right" genes. The Americans term it "depopulating" (its slaughter under a pseudonym ). I suspect, from what I read, that the uptake of the National Scrapie Plan is low and the interest minimal, more especially when it means having sheep killed as a result.They appear to be threshing around, trying to scare people into having their stock tested and alarming the public in the process, presumably reducing demand for lamb and driving down the price so £90 starts to sound good to some ? I do wish that those who report verbatim on Defra's news handouts would take the trouble to find out more about the subject and desist from stating that BSE can cause CJD and that sheep may have BSE. They are related, they are all TSE's but would appear, from all that I have been able to discover, to be what is termed species specific i.e. a cow doesn't get CJD. a sheep doesn't get BSE (except artifically in a lab), man doesn't get scrapie. cows don't get scrapie. If we can't get this disease, and many of us will have eaten lamb or mutton, unknowingly, from sheep with this condition, just what IS all the fuss about ? Frances