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Article History

Received: 24 April 2019

Accepted: 24 October 2019

First Online: 6 November 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Blood samples from the free range goat flocks were derived from either obligatory monitoring schemes for other diseases (“Tierseuchenkassen” and “Tiergesundheitsdienste” of the federal states) or from approved research projects of the University of Veterinary Medicine (TiHo) Hannover and the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) (e.g. EU project “EMIDA ERA-NET project Goat-TSE-Free”, project number 2811ERA151). In the case that animal experiments were applied in the original studies, these were approved by the competent authority of the Federal State of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Germany, State Institution for Agriculture, Food Safety and Fishing (LALLF 7221.3–2-045/14), on the basis of national and European legislation, namely directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. Sample collection was performed under the official supervision of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) and the individual federal states under statement number TV-20140512.Animal immunization and blood sample collectionwere approved by the competent authority of the Federal State of Thuringia, Germany, Thuringeian State Institution for Food Safety and Consumer Protection (TLLV 04–104/10; BFI-17-102), Bad Langensalza. Special consent of participation was not necessary because these animals were owned by the FLI for the whole study period.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.