§ Mr. HinchliffeTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the incidence of scrapie-associated fibrils in the central nervous system of dogs in the United Kingdom. [19437]
§ Mrs. BrowningNo case of scrapie-like transmissible spongiform encephalopathy has ever been confirmed in a dog in the United Kingdom, or reported in any other country in the world.
Brains from culled hounds in packs throughout Great Britain, which are traditionally fed fallen livestock, and so may be considered a high risk population exposed to potentially infected tissues before controls were introduced in September 1990, have been examined and the results considered by Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee in August 1994 and subsequently re-evaluated by it in June 1995. The committee concluded that the results were inconclusive because there were certain limitations in the protocol of the study. It was 562W recognised however, that the study established that in the dogs studied there was no evidence of a pathologically overt SE similar to that reported in the domestic cat.