Volume 16: Reference Material
3. Statistics
Scrapie statistics

3.26 Scrapie statistics are much less reliable than those for BSE, and have tended to be underestimated. Before scrapie became notifiable in Great Britain in 1993, data on the disease relied upon the voluntary submissions by farmers through their veterinary surgeons to the VICs. The figures given in Figures 3.38 and 3.39, which show data up to 28 July 1998, should therefore be treated with caution. The number of cases of scrapie by the end of 1998 was 499, and by the end of 1999 732 cases had been reported, of which 544 had proved positive, with 50 more pending.

3.27 The high number of cases shown for 1991 and 1992 is not a true reflection of the course of the disease. In these two years the Veterinary Investigation Service offered a bounty of £15 a head for scrapie-infected sheep brains, which were needed to form a pool of raw material for an experiment in which several rendering processes were to be tested for their ability to inactivate scrapie. The level of submissions of scrapie-infected sheep was consequently much higher than any seen beforehand.

Figure 3.38: Confirmed cases of scrapie in sheep and goats by age in Great Britain, 1980 to July 1998

Figure 3.39: Confirmed cases of scrapie in sheep and goats in Great Britain, 1980 to July 1998