Mary's Little Lambs

As foot and mouth disease raced across England and into Europe, shock waves spread well ahead and deep scars remained behind. The United Kingdom sagged under the weight of withering tourism, huge agricultural losses, and wholesale disruptions in the movement of people. Prime Minister Tony Blair called out the army and even postponed national elections. Air passengers arriving in Atlanta disinfected their shoes while cattlemen from Kentucky to Kansas wondered whether the plague would strike here

Written byBarry Palevitz

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I suspect a lot of people were chilled at the thought of so many farm animals mooing and bleating their way to slaughter. How many of us blanched at the picture of a huge pile of dead sheep, rotting in twisted repose in a giant trench in northern England? Here were Mary's little lambs, fleece as soiled as dirty snow, killed by the thousands and dumped by the bulldozer full in an effort to stem the disease's relentless advance. No manner of genteel language could hide what was happening: state-mandated murder on a scale that could justify the word holocaust.

Cattle and sheep are bred, born, and raised to die--fodder for billions of hungry human mouths. With vegan diets yet to catch on big-time, a cow's fate is sealed one way or the other. So what was it that tugged at our hearts? Was it the faces of so many ...

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