----- Original Message -----

Do you know? I've really come to like Mark. I have absolutely no idea whether he is right or not, but I have eyeballed some of our top scientists. They are the kind of pathetic rubbish that would not get a job in a properly run shipping office, let alone be at the top of the Scientific Civil Service.

We have to rethink our appointment to and financing of veterinary science in the UK.

Mark is right. So long as you tell the truth, when you are flattened, you get up and go back at them, so they flatten you again, you get up again....ad infinitum

The liars and gong hunters will become the hunted, the persecuted will prevail.

I'm just amazed that anyone ever doubts it. I'm really proud, in my small way, to have the chance to stand and be counted. It does not come to all of us.

Well done Mark. Spirits up Colleen! (We all get our down moments)

Pat Gardiner
go-self-sufficient.com

Author wrote:
Hi Colleen,
It depresses me that you are all so defeatist. Why let DEFRA get away with
slaughtering many sheep flocks that are 3% plus scrapie susceptible when

there

is no scientific basis whatsoever for their actions. In fact, All of the
science suggests the total opposite. So abit of lateral thinking,

marshalling of the

scientific evidence, and clubbing together of aggrieved sheep farmers

should

see the slaughter the ministry, and not your sheep.
We British people seem to lack belief in ourselves as individuals. We
indocrinate ourselves that the government, the docter, the scientist is

always right.

This is a total myth that is born out of some inferiority that was

acquired

during schooling. As long as you stick to the truth, the power that the
individual possesses is immense and limitless.
The entire scrapie slaughter policy is nothing to do with health and

disease,

but more to do with the agendas of the corporations that are puppetting
governments to uphold their self centred masterplan for the global food

futures

market. DEFRA have totally betrayed us, but are very shaky and unsure over

what

they have been forced to carry out, since few of them actually believe in

what

they are doing right now. I have personal intelligence on this. An

unstable

bureaucracy is very insecure and easy to topple. Now is the time to hit

them

hard, again and again and again, until they are completely destroyed and
obliterated. – before your sheep.
Best,
Mark Purdey.

----- Original Message -----

I am afraid Ron, that we little people 'could never know what is happening in the REAL sheep World' we little people will always be outsiders'. It the dreaded day ever comes when they do decide to take your sheep, my sheep – it would give me NO pleasure to say 'well I did try to tell you so', to the keepers, breeders and enthusiastics of this breed .

 We did not go to Carlisle this year – because the future does not look certain – does it? (we also knew you would be buying up the show Ron!!

Our Shetland sheep are 'beauties' not because they came from one of the top breeders in the Country, but because we love them for all of their traits and silly little ways. Some people need to realise that you cannot undo what DEFRA and their scientific advisers are propelling them towards . Waking up and crying afterward the event will be useless. Once gone – that's it. We seem to be sitting back and just waiting for the axe to fall.

Coleen

----- Original Message -----

 Mary Critchley of Warmwell and I are good friends from the early days of The
 Foot and Mouth Horror/Madness. She has sent me Muckscraper 20 November 2003.
 I forward it to you with the following comment:-

 Have we not learnt anything from Foot and Mouth when almost 12 Million
 animals were slaughtered, of which less than 2 Million were supposed to be
 infected. Where vets, government officials, police and the Services bullied
 and lied their way through the Countryside. Where good and honest farmers
 were reduced to physical wrecks, some have never fully recovered. There have been around 60 suicides. We are left with long term environmental pollution.

 So you co-operate with inflicting further madness on the rural community!

What the hell is the point of us protecting an already limited gene pool for some lunatic to decide to reduce it even further by this mad scheme. Next year, with luck, we may have some first-class lambs. Especially as we have an excellent example of a Shetland Ram, he of the twice tested R1, plus DNA testing. Three of our ewes were 1st, 2nd and 4th in the Carlisle Show
last year. We are breeding for colour and quality.

My farmer friend who is a good sheep man chose those lambs last year without knowing anything about Shetlands and not realising that they had won in the Show. He sees our Flock every day and says that they are superb sheep.

If you do not believe that the whole scheme is madness visit www.mikepurdey.com and that is just part of it. The Schemes have been challenged by others.

I am truthfully already beginning to regret that we decided , late in our lives, to have our own flock of Pedigree Sheep. Our intention was to fight like hell if Defra turned up with another planned massacre. We did not think we would have to defend ourselves against the complacency of fellow breeders!

Ron.

----- Original Message -----

Here is Muckspreader

Muckspreader 20 november 2003
***
Phyllida Barstowe is not only an admired novelist and married to the
journalist Duff Hart-Davis, but professionally breeds Wiltshire Horn sheep
on their Gloucestershire farm. Until recently her flock roamed happily

over

the meadows round a fine young pure-bred ram. Then, on 1 September, she

was

visited by the department for the elimination of farming and rural affairs
(Defra), to test her sheep under the EU-sponsored 'National Scrapie Plan'.
To understand what happened next, some background is relevant. Defra, it

may

be remembered, has spent millions of pounds trying to establish a link
between scrapie, a brain disease affecting a tiny minority of sheep, and
BSE, a brain disease affecting a tiny minority of cattle. They haven't
actually found any link (although readers may recall the famous episode

when

they tested thousands of sheep's brains for two years, only to discover

they

had been looking at the brains of cows).
The reason for such excitement, of course, is that Defra still believes
there may be a link between BSE and vCJD, a brain disease affecting a tiny
minority of human beings. So, if they can prove a link between scrapie and
BSE, this would be a tremendous breakthrough, because it would show there
may be a link between eating sheep and CJD. They also believe that a tiny
minority of sheep are genetically susceptible to scrapie. They have
therefore taken this as justification, on EU orders, to test pedigree

sheep.

Any which do not have the 'scrapie-resistant genes', they can then order

to

be slaughtered or castrated.
Every step of Defra's tortuous logic is in fact based on a hypothesis for
which there is no proof. There is no proven link between eating cattle
infected with BSE and CJD (indeed this becomes ever more implausible).

There

is no evidence that any sheep has ever naturally become infected with BSE
There is no evidence that scrapie has ever infected humans. Even the

theory

about scrapie-resistant genes has been rubbished by one of the top
independent scientists in the field. Dr. Alan Dickenson. The whole of the
EU's scrapie eradication programme thus rests on a card-house of unproven
hypotheses.
When Defra tested the brains of 54,000 sheep from abattoirs, they did find
56 infected with scrapie. But no fewer than eight of these also possessed
their so-called 'scrapie resistant genotype'. Since this made total

nonsense

of their theory, they then carried out another test, which luckily came

out

with the result they were after: i.e. that only 28 of the sheep were
infected with scrapie, none of which had the resistant gene. 'At present

it

is not known if the cause of these findings' said Defra, 'is a flaw in the
methodology'. But, flawed methodology or not, the great thing was they

still

had the excuse they needed to kill any animal they could find without that
'resistant gene'.
All of which brings us back to Mrs Hart-Davis's Wiltshire Horn ram, Of
course it turned out to be the one animal in her flock without the

resistant

gene. So, although it was a perfectly healthy young sheep, off to the
slaughterhouse under EU rules it had to go – on the basis of four

different

hypotheses piled on top of each other, for not one of which there is any
proof a genuine scientist could accept. Mrs Hart-Davis was none too
pleased.

***************