Victoria participates in the national Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Freedom Assurance Program (TSEFAP).
The TSEFAP aims to enhance market confidence that Australian animals and animal products are free from Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or 'mad cow disease') and scrapie, through the structured and nationally integrated management of animal-related TSE activities. This is achieved by the multiple components of the TSEFAP:
- active TSE surveillance
- ruminant feeding restrictions, including audit, feed sampling and testing
- imported ruminant surveillance, including buy-back schemes for targeted cattle
- research and development, including validation, adoption and technology transfer of diagnostic tests.
The TSEFAP is funded by industry and governments and managed by Animal Health Australia.
Active TSE surveillance in Victoria
Australia is free from BSE and scrapie. However, to continue to be classified as 'free' and to maintain access to international markets, there is an active surveillance program in place to detect cases of BSE and scrapie, should they occur. This program is known as the TSE Surveillance program.
An incentive scheme is funded by industry.
Producers who have suitably sick animals autopsied for the program are entitled to claim $330 GST free for cattle and $110 GST free for sheep.
Private vets who are called to examine cases of nervous disease in cattle, sheep and goats, and submit samples and case histories to government laboratories can claim a rebate per case of up to:
- $374 GST inclusive for cattle
- $242 GST inclusive for sheep
- $137.50 (GST inclusive) for goats.
Eligible for program
To be eligible for the program, cattle must be 30 months or older and sheep and goats must be 18 months or older. They must show nervous signs that can include (but are not limited to):
- abnormal behaviour
- gait and sensitivity to sound and touch
- and for sheep/goats, persistent itchiness.
More information on the National TSE Surveillance program can be found on the Animal Health Australia website.
Veterinarians wishing to submit cases for the NTSESP must examine the NTSESP Guidelines for Field Operations at Animal Health Australia and consult the department's District Veterinary or Animal Health Officers before submitting cases. This is to ensure that animals meet eligibility criteria and sample and documentation requirements are clearly understood. Incentive payments to producers and veterinarians are then assured.
For vets already familiar with the program, the relevant laboratory submission form, clinical history or necropsy report form and an application form for cattle and sheep compensation are included.
NLIS or RFID tag details must be included on the clinical history or necropsy report form.
Download:
- Laboratory submission form(WORD - 138.5 KB)
- Clinical history/necropsy report form (WORD - 82.9 KB)
- Claim form for incentive payments (WORD - 114.2 KB)
- TSE submissions and reporting – Checklist (WORD - 57.5 KB)
Ruminant feeding restrictions
Australia has banned the feeding of certain animal-derived materials to ruminants. These materials are known as restricted animal materials (RAM) and include meat, fish, eggs and poultry meals (including feathers) but do not include gelatin, milk, tallow or fish oils. The ban is known as the Ruminant Feed Ban (RFB).
Australia is free of BSE. The RFB serves to maintain this freedom by ensuring that if the agent causing BSE were to spontaneously occur or to be inadvertently introduced to Australia, it would not be able to establish a cycle of infection within the ruminant population.
Each of Australia's state and territory animal health authorities has developed similar but not identical legislation and are responsible for creating awareness, performing audits and enforcing legislation relating to the ban within their jurisdictions that follow nationally agreed guidelines and meet nationally agreed targets. In Victoria, those responsibilities are owned and given high priority by the department's animal health and welfare group. A target number of audits have to be conducted in each region each year as part of Victoria's RFB auditing program.
The RFB auditing program compliments quality assurance (QA) programs already existing within the livestock feed industry. Many but not all of the companies producing stock feeds are members of the Stock Feed Manufacturers Council of Australia (SFMCA). The SFMCA has introduced an independently audited QA program called FeedSafe sets standards of feed production that includes measures to protect ruminant feeds against contamination with RAM.
Private vets visiting farms are asked to watch for instances where ruminants might be exposed to RAM and take action to advise the farmer and prevent the risk. These instances are most likely to occur on farms where ruminants might gain access to discarded, spilt or stored pig, poultry and dog foods.
Research and development
(including validation, adoption and technology transfer of diagnostic tests)
The department has contributed significantly to the evaluation of new rapid tests for TSEs in Australia since 1998.
FAQs
Research suggests that vCJD may have resulted from human consumption of beef from cattle with a TSE disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as Mad Cow Disease. Other TSEs found in animals include: Scrapie, which affects sheep and goats. Chronic wasting disease, which affects elk and deer.
What is transmissible spongiform encephalopathy bovine spongiform encephalopathy? ›
BSE belongs to a family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that includes, among others, scrapie in sheep and goats; chronic wasting disease in deer, elk, and moose; and classic and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people.
What are the symptoms of spongiform encephalopathy? ›
Human TSEs (Prion Diseases)
Primary symptoms of CJD are dementia, followed by rapid mental deterioration. Other symptoms include myoclonus (irregular, involuntary contraction of a muscle), rigidity, nystagmus (rapid, involuntary oscillation of the eyeballs), tremors and visual deficits.
Does mad cow disease still exist? ›
Mad cow disease is extremely rare in the United States. Most cases have occurred in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom. U.S. government agencies have taken many steps to keep food in the United States safe.
How do humans get Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease? ›
Approximately 5–15% of cases are inherited (genetic CJD), and a small percentage (<1%) have been related to transplants of contaminated tissues, exposure to contaminated neurosurgical instruments or other instruments, or exposure to contaminated pituitary hormones (iatrogenic CJD).
Can spongiform encephalopathy be cured? ›
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), also known as prion diseases, are a group of progressive, incurable, and fatal conditions that are associated with prions and affect the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans, cattle, and sheep.
Are prion diseases always fatal? ›
Prion diseases are a family of illnesses that affect people and animals. These diseases are rare but always lead to death in the person or animal within months to years of symptoms beginning. There is no treatment or vaccine.
What does prion disease feel like? ›
Sporadic Prion Diseases
Typical symptoms include imbalance and incoordination, memory loss and impaired thinking, and psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety or depression. Once the symptoms do appear, CJD progresses very quickly and is usually fatal within a few months of symptom onset.
How long does it take to recover from encephalopathy? ›
Each person's experience with encephalopathy varies. You may feel better within a couple of days after receiving treatment. Others may need more time and it could take weeks to months before they're able to get back to their daily routine. While less common, some people may not make a full recovery.
When do CJD symptoms start? ›
It starts on average at age 65 years. Familial CJD occurs when a person inherits the abnormal prion from a parent (this form of CJD is rare). Acquired CJD includes variant CJD (vCJD), the form related to mad cow disease.
Mr Simms, aged 21, is now the world's longest surviving vCJD patient. He continues to receive the treatment, but did not participate in Professor Bone's study. The Medical Research Council's prion unit is studying another potential treatment for vCJD, the antimalarial drug quinacrine.
Can you cook out mad cow disease? ›
In addition, normal disinfection procedures do not stop this disease, so even well-cooked contaminated meat can infect humans. The rendering process – cooking of dead, often disease-ridden, animals – used to make supplements for animal feed, also cannot kill the infection, and only serves to spread it.
How many people have died from Mad Cow? ›
232. That's how many people have died from the variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease linked to mad cow disease, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
What is the rarest brain disorder? ›
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, is a rare degenerative brain disease that is incurable and fatal. It is caused by prions, infectious, misshapen versions of normal proteins, which build up in the brain, damaging brain cells.
Is Alzheimer's prion? ›
assays developed for amyloid β-prions showed that patient longevity and the severity of Alzheimer's disease are related to the infectivity of tau-prions and amyloid β-prions rather than the amount of insoluble, inert amyloid plaques in post-mortem brain samples (Alzheimer's disease is a double prion disease).
What is the prion disease in cannibalism? ›
Causes. Kuru is a very rare disease. It is caused by an infectious protein (prion) found in contaminated human brain tissue. Kuru is found among people from New Guinea who practiced a form of cannibalism in which they ate the brains of dead people as part of a funeral ritual.
What happens in bovine spongiform encephalopathy? ›
A cow gets BSE by eating feed contaminated with parts that came from another cow that was sick with BSE. The contaminated feed contains the abnormal prion, and a cow becomes infected with the abnormal prion when it eats the feed. If a cow gets BSE, it most likely ate the contaminated feed during its first year of life.
Where do prions come from? ›
An expanding body of evidence argues that many different NDs are caused by prions, which are formed from normal proteins (146). Prions arise when normal proteins acquire an alternative conformation that becomes self-propagating.
What are the symptoms of prion disease? ›
Sporadic Prion Diseases
Typical symptoms include imbalance and incoordination, memory loss and impaired thinking, and psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety or depression. Once the symptoms do appear, CJD progresses very quickly and is usually fatal within a few months of symptom onset.
What is the meaning of spongiform? ›
resembling a sponge in appearance, esp in having many holes. denoting diseases characterized by this appearance of affected tissues.
