[they're heeere ... same old stories about how there's no danger, mass cow and sheep burnings should be here by the fall, based on the rest of Europe ...] http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010321/ts/madcow_sheep_dc_9.html [pics/links] Wednesday March 21 8:52 PM ET USDA Seizes Vermont 'Mad Cow' Sheep GREENSBORO, Vt. (Reuters) - U.S. Department of Agriculture agents seized one of two flocks of dairy sheep suspected of having an ailment related to mad cow disease, one of the shepherds told Reuters on Wednesday. ``I'm very unhappy about it,'' said Houghton Freeman, one of the shepherds speaking by phone from his large and remote farm in Greensboro, Vt. The farm was surrounded early Wednesday morning by police cars and men wearing bullet proof vests who herded Freeman's 233 sheep into trucks that would take them to Iowa to be slaughtered and then tested. ``I think they (the USDA) wanted to grab them before the court could act,'' he said. ``It's a country of laws and I have to obey the law,'' Freeman said. Breeding pairs of the sheep were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands in 1996 and placed under certain restrictions as part of the USDA's scrapie control efforts, the agency said in a statement Wednesday. In July, several sheep from the flocks tested positive for transmissible spongiform encephalopathy or TSE. TSE is a class of degenerative neurological diseases that includes both scrapie and mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as it is more formally known. TSE has a very long incubation period and a 100 percent mortality rate, the USDA said. There has never been a case of BSE in the United States. But in Britain the ailment has devastated herds of cattle, cost billions of dollars and is blamed for the deaths of at least 80 people. Scientists believe that BSE can be passed onto humans through consumption of meat from infected animals. The human form of mad cow is known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a fatal disease caused by infectious agents called prions which attack the brain, killing cells and creating gaps in tissue. Britain and Europe have faced another separate assault on their food supply with the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, an ailment that attacks not only cattle, but sheep and pigs. Unlike mad cow, there is no evidence that scrapie poses a risk to human health and the USDA said in its statement ``there is no way to determine whether the sheep have BSE or scrapie.'' Linda Detwiler, USDA senior staff veterinarian, said there are tests that can determine the specific strain of the disease, but it would take up to three years to determine. Detwiler said government officials seized the sheep to prevent, ``an introduction of a foreign strain of scrapie.'' No Consumer Danger Detwiler reassured U.S. consumers that the sheep did not pose any danger to the food industry. The farmers sold some cheese and milk products as well as meat from the sheep prior to a 1998 quarantine on the herds. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traced the food products and its investigations found no infection of BSE, she said. Freeman and his fellow shepherds, the Faillace family, have waged a nine-month legal battle over whether the USDA has the right to destroy the sheep. The Vermont shepherds maintain the government's scrapie tests were improperly conducted and the seizure is part of The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City said on March 6 it would expedite the appeals process in the case, but did not issue an order preventing the herds's seizure. ``It's really sad. In fact, it's tragic,'' said Alexis Lathem, a spokeswoman for the small farmers advocacy group Rural Vermont. ``If there had actually been something wrong with the animals, this would have been sad, but necessary. There's nothing wrong with the animals though.'' ``What USDA is doing is closing the door on a viable type of agriculture for small farmers in Vermont,'' Lathem added. USDA spokeswoman Anna Cherry said that the sheep would be transported in trucks ``as humanely and comfortably as possible'' to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa where they will be slaughtered. But Larry Faillace, who owns the other flock that has yet to be seized, said his sheep have not yet been shorn. ``They're due for that next week.'' He said the temperature in Iowa was forecast to be in the 70s and ``I really fear for the sheep in that heat.'' He also said that while he had halted the flock's milk production last summer when the legal battle began, ``We have a new batch of lambs -- 27 of them. We have all these ewes with their lambs. I don't know if they have the right facilities to deal with them or whether they even care.'' Detwiler said the USDA expected to seize the Faillace flock sometime within the next three weeks. additional reporting by Randy Fabi in Washington bureau Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
