A financial cost-benefit analysis of eradicating virulent footrot.

In 2008, virulent footrot was detected in sheep in south-west Norway. Footrot is caused by Dichelobacter nodosus, and the outbreak was linked to live sheep imported from Denmark in 2005. A large-scale program for eradicating the disease was implemented as a joint industry and governmental driven eradication project in the years 2008-2014, and continued with surveillance and control measures by the Norwegian Food Safety Authority from 2015.

Sheep grazing in the North Atlantic region: A long-term perspective on environmental sustainability.

Sheep grazing is an important part of agriculture in the North Atlantic region, defined here as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Scotland. This process has played a key role in shaping the landscape and biodiversity of the region, sometimes with major environmental consequences, and has also been instrumental in the development of its rural economy and culture. In this review, we present results of the first interdisciplinary study taking a long-term perspective on sheep management, resource economy and the ecological impacts of sheep grazing, showing that sustainability boundaries are most likely to be exceeded in fragile environments where financial support is linked to the number of sheep produced.