2023-11-27 18:45:04
ANNE-GAËLLE AMIOT
“It was an uproar! » Sylvie Benestad remembers very clearly this spring of 2016, when the first European case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) was identified in a wild reindeer from the Nordfjella mountain, in the southwest from Norway. This Frenchwoman, who has lived in Oslo for more than thirty years, was then responsible for prion analyzes at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute. Naturalists responsible for a research program on the movements of wildlife had just witnessed the sudden death of a reindeer, during an intervention to place a GPS collar on one of the animals in the herd.
“The animal was sent to us, and its brain was sent to us”, says the researcher, who immediately submitted a sample to a rapid test for the detection of pathogenic prions developed by the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Fontenay-aux-Roses (Hauts-de-Seine) twenty years later early, during the “mad cow” crisis. Faced with the positive result – “a huge surprise” –, she multiplies the examinations and, ” after a week, [elle] didn’t have
#Norway #monitors #deer