Sweden has populations of 400 000 sheep and 3000 goats. Animal sales are traditionally intensive as part of the breeding work. This has led to increased awareness among sheep owners about the risk of spreading diseases. The control programme against maedi-visna in sheep has been running since 1993, and today there are almost 1200 maedi-visna free flocks, with about 46 000 sheep. The control programme against CAEV in goats has been running since 1998.
Scrapie
In accordance with the EU-regulated monitoring programme, 20 brains of sheep or goats are examined annually for scrapie. No case of scrapie has been found in Sweden since 1986. The major importance of parasitic diseases in sheep has been further accentuated in connection with the interest in ecological production.