NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, March 24, 2001

Agents from the Department of Agriculture arrived at the farm of Larry and Linda Faillace to round up their 120 sheep. The shepherds were alerted by the USDA Thursday night that the sheep were to be seized Friday.

Earlier this week, 234 sheep belonging to Houghton Freeman in Greensboro, Vt., were trucked to Ames, Iowa, where they were being slaughtered and tested for exposure to the brain-wasting disease. The USDA said initial tests on Freeman's sheep indicated they were positive for TSE, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, which is in the same family of diseases as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, and scrapie.

The Faillaces, who had lost a legal battle to prevent the seizure of their sheep, held a candlelight vigil Thursday night with friends after being notified of the impending seizure.

Freeman's sheep were seized Wednesday and trucked to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames.

Both flocks had been imported from Belgium in 1996 and were under quarantine since 1998.

Federal agriculture officials have said they had no choice but to take action to prevent mad cow from spreading to the United States. Mad cow has never been confirmed in sheep. Scrapie and mad cow are brain-wasting diseases with no known cure. The bovine form is believed responsible for variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans who eat contaminated beef. About 100 people are believed to have died in Britain since 1995 from variant Creutzfeld-Jakob.

Scrapie is not a threat to humans.

Mad cow disease is believed to have been spread through animal feed contaminated with additives made from sheep suffering from scrapie. The seizure of the animals in Vermont was the first time the government has taken such action. The USDA said the seizures were necessary to protect the American consumer.

See more articles about "mad cow" disease.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.