Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has been transmitted naturally between ewes and lambs at a government experimental farm in Britain, raising concern over the possible spread of the disease there.
Scientists here are studying the report of maternal transmission of the disease which was published in scientific journal Veterinary Record earlier this week.
A Department of Agriculture and Food spokesman said it would issue a statement when the full reports had been examined.
Scientists from the UK government's Veterinary Laboratories Agency have revealed that two ewes fed 5mg of BSE-infected material had lambs that died of BSE after showing signs of infection in their tonsils, 546 days after birth.
Their mothers had shown no outward signs of the disease at lambing, one ewe showing them 73 days after lambing and the other after 198 days, the report said.
It is still not certain that the lambs were infected while in the uterus, or shortly before or after lambing. The disease may have spread through the birthing fluids or in some other way. The evidence so far suggests this is far more likely than the lambs catching the disease from other apparently unaffected sheep.
BSE has never been found in sheep outside experimental farms but some scientists believe that a similar disease in sheep, called Scrapie, may mask BSE in sheep.
A large scale investigation into the possibility of BSE being in the British national flock was abandoned some years ago when samples from sheep and cattle were mixed up and the four year experiment had to be stopped.
However, when sheep are given BSE in laboratory conditions, almost their entire carcase becomes contaminated with the disease, unlike cattle where the disease is confined to specific organs of the central nervous system.
Food safety advisers have previously warned that any sheep with BSE entering the food chain would be potentially far more dangerous than a single cow, since more parts of the animal can carry infection.
The disease is thought to have started in cattle in Britain in the mid 1980s, when infected brain tissue from sheep was incorporated at too-low heat levels into meat and bonemeal feeding for cattle.
Britain has a sheep flock of about 40 million animals.