In April 2006, the British Columbia Purebred Sheep Breeders’ Association completed a two-year project to genotype the BC purebred sheep flock with the aim of increasing its resistance to scrapie.
Scrapie is a fatal disease that affects the central nervous system of sheep and goats. Found all over the world, scrapie is known as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), similar to mad cow disease in cattle, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
“Science has found a gene in sheep that is totally resistant to scrapie,” explains Judith Glibbery, the project coordinator. “The goal of this project was to genotype purebred sheep in BC to see if they have this gene.”
Gathering genetic information allows breeders to develop breeding management strategies that will increase scrapie resistance in their flocks without sacrificing performance. “Ideally, we’d like farmers to keep their best animals while slowly introducing the resistant gene into the flock,” said Glibbery.
Developing scrapie-resistant sheep flocks not only relieves the government from the financial burden of eliminating infected animals, it will also have a direct impact on the sale of BC purebred sheep. The United States plans to become scrapie-resistant by 2010 and scrapie-free by 2017, and many countries, including those in the EU, are also engaged in genotyping. Comprehensive genotyping programs will allow the Canadian industry to compete internationally.
“Since the border closed after the BSE scare, we have not been able to ship breeding stock (ewes and rams) into or out of the US which has been extremely hard on our industry,” said Glibbery. “Hopefully, BC purebred sheep will soon be able to cross an open border and BC scrapie-resistant sheep will then be more valuable than ever.”
Glibbery says that the project achieved all of its goals. They genotyoped 2,400 sheep, putting the information into what is now a national database. Using the results of the genotyping, farmers were given breeding management strategies to raise the level of resistance to scrapie in their individual flocks.
IAF contributed $139,800, or 87% of the costs of this project and the sheep industry contributed the balance. “It’s just not financially workable for our sheep farmers to pay for this kind of testing,” said Glibbery. “That’s why we went to IAF. This project really gave the breeders a financial helping hand.”
“The sheep industry in Canada is small compared to other livestock industries and consequently has not commanded the attention the larger industries do. Despite this, our national sheep industry is growing every year and with the sale of high quality Canadian lamb to the Canadian public growing every year as well, our future is optimistic.”
From “Growing Tomorrow, Summer 2007 – the latest from the Investment Agriculture foundation of British Columbia”
