000805 From Mad Cow to Mad Sheep?

Brussels - European Union scientists are probing the nightmare possibility of an epidemic of mad cow disease in the sheep population.

“It's an area we are concerned about and there is a scientific risk assessment program under way,” Beate Gminder, spokeswoman for EU Health Commissioner David Byrne, said.

“But so far,” she stressed, “there is no scientific proof.”

Professor Emmanuel Vanopdenbosch, chairman of the working group in the European Commission on mad cow disease, or BSE, told Belgian newspaper De Morgen, “The BSE question with sheep is a timebomb that continues to tick.”

Although the cattle brain-wasting disorder blamed for causing more than 50 human deaths has yet to show up in the sheep population, a disease of the same family, scrapie, is widespread.

Scrapie is not believed to be dangerous to humans, but EU scientists believe sheep could contract the cattle variant.

If BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) took hold, it could spread quickly from flock to flock and need drastic measures to contain it.

A sheep's relatively small size means the disease would affect nervous tissue much quicker than with cattle and the rate of infection would be much higher.

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