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Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Ottawa Laboratory Fallowfield, national and WOAH reference laboratory for scrapie and CWD logo

Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Ottawa Laboratory Fallowfield, national and WOAH reference laboratory for scrapie and CWD

The Ottawa Animal Health Laboratory is a federal Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) laboratory on the Ottawa Laboratory (Fallowfield) campus, 3851 Fallowfield Road, the agency's largest laboratory site. Its transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) unit is Canada's national reference laboratory for scrapie and chronic wasting disease (CWD), and since 2007 the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, then OIE) has designated it an international reference laboratory for both diseases. The designated WOAH expert is the head of the TSE unit. The laboratory confirms TSE diagnoses, supports national surveillance, and supplies reference materials, protocols and proficiency panels to other countries. Its scientists co-authored the 2016 report of the first CWD case in Europe and the 2020 bank vole study showing Norwegian CWD strains differ from North American ones, and have published on experimental CWD in reindeer, atypical scrapie in Canada and RT-QuIC for CWD. Canada's BSE reference role is held by a different CFIA laboratory, in Lethbridge. The laboratory works on animal prion diseases only and has no role in diagnosing human CJD. Information only, not medical or veterinary advice.

Key facts

  • The OIE designated two CFIA laboratories at the Fallowfield research complex in Ottawa, specialising in scrapie and CWD, as international reference laboratories at its 75th General Session, announced on 25 May 2007.
  • The CFIA states that the Ottawa Animal Health Laboratory has been a WOAH reference laboratory for CWD and scrapie since 2007, with the head of its TSE unit as designated expert; its mandate covers research on TSE diagnosis, surveillance and control and advice, technical help and training for WOAH member countries.
  • Services listed for that role are TSE diagnostic testing and confirmation, TSE surveillance, and reference materials, method protocols and proficiency panels for laboratories abroad.
  • The CFIA reference laboratory list (modified 11 May 2026) gives CWD and scrapie to Ottawa and BSE to the National Centre for Animal Disease in Lethbridge, which it describes as the only laboratory in Canada able to confirm a suspected BSE case.
  • The laboratory is one of five CFIA animal health laboratories; its TSE diagnostics cover BSE, CWD and scrapie, its research includes genotyping animals for TSE resistance, it is ISO/IEC 17025 accredited through the Standards Council of Canada, and it is the Canadian reference laboratory for scrapie and CWD among other diseases.
  • The Fallowfield campus has about 200 staff on roughly 2,000 acres with a working farm and containment level 2 and 3 facilities; Public Services and Procurement Canada plans a Regulatory and Security Science hub on the site, with no dates given.
  • A Fallowfield TSE scientist was second author of the first report of CWD in Europe, a free-ranging reindeer in Norway, published in Veterinary Research on 15 September 2016 with the affiliation "National and OIE Reference Laboratory for Scrapie and CWD, Ottawa Laboratory Fallowfield".
  • The laboratory co-authored the 2020 PNAS bank vole study led by ISS Rome, which found that Norwegian CWD isolates behave as strains distinct from North American CWD and that reindeer and moose in Norway carry different strains.
  • In a 2012 study led from the laboratory, three of three reindeer given white-tailed deer CWD by mouth reached terminal disease at 18.5 to 20 months, while three given elk CWD did not, and the authors suggested some PRNP variants may protect.
  • In 2010 the laboratory reported the first three atypical (Nor98-like) scrapie cases found by enhanced surveillance in Canadian sheep.
  • Laboratory staff took part in a 2020 multi-laboratory cross-validation of RT-QuIC on elk rectal biopsies, with Colorado State and NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories co-authors, and in 2024 published an RT-QuIC run time optimisation for CWD screening of white-tailed deer, where runs of about 29 to 33 hours matched ELISA better than 40 hours.
  • A Europe PMC affiliation search finds 30 prion, scrapie or CWD papers with a Fallowfield address from 2002 to 2026, including PRNP genotyping of Canadian caribou and sheep and goat scrapie genetics.
  • The Norwegian Emerging CWD project (Research Council of Norway 334585, 2023 to 2029) flew 13 genotyped reindeer calves to Canadian facilities in Ottawa in autumn 2024 for a multi-year transmission trial. A WOAH report excerpt names the CFIA in Ottawa as the trial site; this is not confirmed from a page read in full.
  • The CWD macaque transmission study funded by the Alberta Prion Research Institute and led by a CFIA scientist was coordinated from the CFIA Lethbridge laboratory, not from Ottawa, according to the sources already in the atlas.

Timeline

  1. 2002Earliest prion related paper with a Fallowfield affiliation in Europe PMC.
  2. 2007OIE designates the Fallowfield scrapie and CWD laboratories as international reference laboratories.
  3. 2010Reports the first three atypical scrapie cases found in Canadian sheep.
  4. 2012Publishes experimental oral transmission of CWD to reindeer.
  5. 2016Co-authors the first report of CWD in Europe, in a Norwegian wild reindeer.
  6. 2020Co-authors the bank vole study separating Norwegian from North American CWD strains.
  7. 2024autumn Norwegian Emerging CWD reindeer calves arrive at facilities in Ottawa.
  8. 2024Publishes RT-QuIC run time optimisation for CWD in white-tailed deer.
  9. 2026CFIA reference laboratory list confirms Ottawa for CWD and scrapie and Lethbridge for BSE.
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