Argentina confirmed its first-ever cases of classical scrapie -a fatal neurological disease caused by prions that affects sheep and goats- this week, marking a historic break in the country’s animal health record. SENASA, Argentina’s national food and agriculture safety authority, identified the disease in three Dorper breeding sheep at farms in the provinces of Santa Fe and Entre Ríos. The animals had been imported from Paraguay in 2021 and 2022, cleared all required entry controls under the applicable regulations, and died of natural causes between February and May of 2025 without displaying clinical symptoms. Samples sent to a reference laboratory in Spain confirmed the presence of classical scrapie using Western Blot analysis.
As required by international protocols, SENASA reported the findings to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). Argentina immediately lost its long-held “scrapie-free” country status, triggering automatic trade consequences that reach well beyond the sheep industry.
Scrapie belongs to the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) family, the same group as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow disease”). It is not a zoonotic disease, poses no risk to human health, and WOAH does not classify sheep meat as an at-risk commodity. That said, scrapie is a notifiable TSE, and its detection automatically activates international trade mechanisms regardless of its actual public health profile.
The mechanism runs through what Argentina’s bilateral trade agreements call a “country-status clause”, a formal declaration embedded in export protocols confirming that Argentina is free from certain diseases as recognized by WOAH. That clause appears in virtually all protocols covering ovine and caprine products and their derivatives, and in a significant number of protocols for other species as well, because the clause functions as a general country-level sanitary declaration. Once the scrapie-free status is lost, the clause cannot be certified, and the protocol is suspended until the exporting country renegotiates the conditions individually with each trading partner or recovers its WOAH status.
According to available information, close to 200 active export protocols covering animal-origin products and by-products across 78 countries are at risk of suspension. A subset contains explicit references to scrapie or prurigo lumbar in the clause text, covering key markets including Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, China, Japan, Great Britain, and the Eurasian Economic Union. The rest invokes Argentina’s general WOAH disease-free status, which implicitly covers scrapie.
The disruption extends far beyond sheep products because SENASA issued multi-species certificates, which is a single sanitary declaration covering a broad range of animal-origin goods. As a result, the suspension has reached exports of meat and bone meal, tallow, blood products, gelatin, collagen, dairy products, and pet food ingredients, among others. Industry estimates place the total value of exports at risk at close to USD 300 million annually, though no officially disaggregated figures are publicly available. Chile moved first, closing its border to live sheep and certain by-products immediately. Patagonia faces the sharpest near-term exposure given its reliance on ovine meat exports and its cross-border logistics through Chile.
Not all affected protocols are equivalent and that distinction is critical for strategy. Protocols stating that Argentina has “never recorded a case of scrapie” cannot be maintained as written. That declaration is no longer accurate, and the only path to recovery is full bilateral renegotiation and replacement, which requires diplomatic initiative and time. Protocols that reference WOAH country status are more flexible in principle: they can potentially be adapted to the WOAH standards applicable to non-free countries, provided the importing country agrees.
Producers who imported breeding sheep from Paraguay in 2021 or later should immediately verify the traceability of their herds -with particular attention to any offspring of those animals- and contact SENASA to join the active surveillance program. Scrapie’s incubation period of three to five years means that infected animals may currently be asymptomatic at farms not yet under official control.
Exporters with pending or in-transit shipments should assess rerouting options to markets that do not require scrapie-free country status and review their contract terms for provisions addressing material changes in the exporting country’s sanitary status.
The most viable near-term recovery path is geographic zoning. If SENASA can demonstrate to WOAH that Patagonia has no scrapie cases, protocols tied to Patagonian production may recover faster than those covering the country as a whole. Argentina already holds WOAH-recognized foot-and-mouth disease free zones -with and without vaccination- making this precedent a plausible template. The formal process, however, requires sustained epidemiological surveillance, the absence of new cases in the target region, and WOAH approval on a timeline that is difficult to predict at this stage.
Full recovery of national disease-free status is a medium-to-long-term objective. It requires demonstrated eradication, a credible active surveillance program, and formal international recognition. A process that, based on comparable situations in other countries, is measured in years rather than months.