Judge Dooms 'Mad Sheep' Flocks
NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001
Imported from Europe, 355 sheep suspected of carrying mad cow disease have lost their plea in a Vermont courtroom for a stay of execution.
United States District Judge J. Garvan Murtha ruled that their owners must comply with an order last summer by then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to give up their herd as a precaution to spreading the devastating illness into this country.
A laboratory test in July indicated that four animals from the two flocks that came from Belgium were infected with a form of "transmissible spongiform encephalopathy," a family of ailments that includes the fatal, brain-crippling mad cow disease.
The sheep owners, Larry and Linda Faillace of Warren, Vt., and Houghton Freeman of Stowe, Vt., had appealed that ruling, claiming the lab test was flawed and the USDA was being selective in how it was trying to prevent possible importation of infected livestock, meat and cattle byproducts.
They had turned down a government offer of more than $2.4 million for the sheep.
"The danger of the disease does justify taking preventive measures," Faillace said, "but you can't just randomly go out and say, 'I don't like those sheep because they come from Europe.' "
His attorney asked the USDA not to seize the sheep while a further appeal is pending.
Mad cow disease has been linked to a human version that has killed some 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly in Britain.
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