SCOPS,Sustainable Control of Parasites in Sheep, urges UK vets, advisers and farmers to heed its advice to integrate 4-AD and 5-SI wormer classes into the worm control programmes.
The SCOPS group is aware of a report of resistance to the 4-AD group of anthelmintics (monepantel) in the Netherlands in sheep nematodes. The full details are not yet available, but the group understands this situation has arisen because the farms have relied on the 4-AD product because they have resistance to all the other classes available to them.
This comes as a timely warning to the UK, says Peter Baber, SCOPS Chairman and sheep farmer: “This is exactly the situation SCOPS predicted would occur if we do not integrate the new groups into worm control strategies before the older products become ineffective. There are still a large number of UK farms where one or more of the three older groups remain effective. If we carefully integrate the 4-AD and 5-SI products into worm control programmes now, it will extend the useful life of all groups. The Dutch example serves to illustrate the folly of us leaving them until they are the only option.”
