The British experts didn't actually say that. Upon this non-evidence, the USDA ordered the Vermont flocks destroyed, with monetary compensation to their owners. The owners are fighting for their sheep's lives. The matter is in court. The sheep police are poised to descend at any moment.
Demonstrators gather at the farms.
We obviously have a bureaucracy in overdrive here. I might be more impressed at its zeal, if it were not the same bureaucracy that has for decades blessed the practice of raising meat animals in huge concentration camps and that still allows those animals to be fed with hormones, antibiotics, and dead animals. I would be more impressed if the authorities would continue to keep an eye on those Vermont sheep, but expend its executionary energy on farm-raised deer and elk, which seem to be suffering a TSE epidemic in our western states. I would like to direct some USDA precautionary fervor toward genetically engineered crops and animals, which it tends to pronounce safe at the drop of a biotech company's campaign contribution. Speaking of campaign contributions, if you follow the money, you come to an easy explanation of why the USDA is coming down like thunder on three small sheep farms while winking at the gross risks taken every day by the feedlot industry.