The new EU-regulations on organic farming (1804/1999) are also influencing the animal welfare. A lot of positive regulations is to find, but also regulations that seen to mind more about the general public and customer and their view on organic farming, than the health and welfare of the animals.

The paper specially focus on the impact of the regulations and the recommendations that phytotherapeutic essences and homeopathic products take precedence over the so called chemically-synthesised allopatic veterinary medical products, and that the use of the same is prohibited for preventive treatments. Key questions here are the lack of scientific evidence concerning homeopathy in animals, and that Swedish veterinarians are not allowed to work with homeopathy.

Differences in interpretation of the regulations between animal owners and veterinarians will also be discussed. What is a disease that needs treatment? Who is to decide about the treatment? Parasitic infections are discussed as an illustrative example.

Other consequences of the regulations concerning the animal welfare are problems in certain geographical zones, for instance subarctic areas where necessary crops are impossible to grow.

Animal transports and splitting mother-offspring are briefly discussed as future problems to be handled in the regulations, and the paper ends by presenting the need of regulated herd health control programs in organic husbandry, which can detect and focus on welfare and production problems. The organic movement is not static, and must not be so.

SUNDQUIST, BO, LENNART Jl>NSSON, STEN-OLOF JACOBSSON and KARL-ERIK HAMMARBERG: Yisna virus meningoencephalomgelitis in goats. Acta vet. scand. 1981, 22, -A progressive paresis was encountered in herds of Swedish goats. The symp,toms developed during a period of weeks or months, and were Indtially often seen as a weakness of the hind limbs before the animals, became paralytic. The development and the histopathological lesions, of the disease in the CNS and the lungs. we're:" similar to those of visna in sheep. In vitro grown choroid plexus cells, prepared from affected goats, showed foci of polykaryocytes, Electron microscopy revealed the presence of particles morphologically similar to those of sheep visna virus (SVV). Goats experimentally infected with the goat visna virus (GVV) developed eNS lesions similar to those of visna in sheep and became seropositive to SVV. The results of complement fixation tests, carr-ied out on sera from 11 goat herds, showed a coincidence between seroposdtiveness and the OCCl1JITence, of disease in one and the same herd. Using the ELISA method, an. average of 80 % of the goats in 5 herds were found to b•e seropositive to GVV. visna virus; meningoencephalomyelitis; goat.viruses. We could identify particles of the same morphology in CP cells prepared from 5 diseased goats out of 6.

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