Norwegian farmers' vigilance in reporting sheep showing scrapie-associated signs

Although the potential detection of a scrapie-positive animal would lead to the destruction of the sheep flock concerned, almost all the farmers (97 %) expressed their willingness to report scrapie suspects. This was most certainly dependent on the Government taking the economic responsibility for the control programme as nearly all the farmers responded that this was an important condition. Listeriosis is relatively common disease in Norwegian sheep and a differential diagnosis for scrapie. In a multinomial logistic regression the reporting behaviour for non-recovering listeriosis cases, used as a measurement of willingness to report scrapie, was examined. The reporting of non-recovering listeriosis cases increased as the knowledge of scrapie-associated signs increased, and the reporting behaviour was dependent on both economic and non-economic values.The results indicate that in 2002 almost all sheep farmers showed willingness to report any scrapie suspects. Nevertheless there is an underreporting of scrapie suspects and the farmers' awareness and hence their vigilance of scrapie could be improved. Furthermore, the results suggest that to ensure the farmers' compliance to control programmes for serious infectious diseases, the farmers' concerns of non-economic as well as economic values should be considered.Scrapie is a fatal neurodegenerative disease affecting sheep and goat. It belongs to the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), and there are at least two types: classical and atypical scrapie [1]. From the 1960s, the Norwegian Government has considered scrapie a serious animal disease, and if it was detected attempts would be made to eradicate it [2]. During recent years there has been growing international concern about TSEs in sheep as sheep might have acquired bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from concentrated feeds contaminated with the BSE agent [3], and BSE and scrapie cannot be differentiated by clinical signs or histopathological findin