permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

THIS IS A FREE EDUCATIONAL EVENT!!

* Please let me know if you are coming to this event on Thursday!*
*
*
*If you FARM or if you just EAT, Don't miss the WAPF conference in DC
this weekend!-Allan Balliett*
*
*
*Something to Chew On this Thursday!*

Join us on Thursday, November 9 at 7-9PM at Busboys and Poets in
Washington DC (www.busboysandpoets.com) when the Department of Homestead
Security (SLOW FOOD, Fresh and Local CSA and CHELSEA  GREEN PUBLISHING)
proudly present Chelsea Green author/activists:

  Linda Faillace, author of MAD SHEEP: The True Story of the USDA's War
on a Family Farm
  Sandor Katz, author of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE MICROWAVED: Inside
America's Underground Food Movements
  And Jessica Prentice, founder of the 'Locavore' Movement and author of
FULL MOON FEAST: Food and the Hunger for Connection

in a discussion  led by Marsha Weiner, President Food Muse  Media and
Regional Governor of Slow Food USA, on developing a flavorful, clean and
just food system, and on how ordinary people can resist the dominant
system, revive community-based food production, and take direct
responsibility for their own health and nutrition.

Visit  www.chelseagreen.com for more on the Department of Homestead
Security.

For more information about the event, contact Allan Balliett at
allan@freshandlocalcsa.com or (304) 876-3382 or www.freshandlocalcsa.com

*MORE INFORMATION*
The Department of Homestead Security proudly presents Chelsea Green
author/activists
Linda Faillace, author of MAD SHEEP: The True Story of the USDA's War on
a Family Farm
e-press kit here: http://www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/madsheep

Sandor Katz, author of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE MICROWAVED: Inside
America's Underground Food Movements
e-press kit here: http://www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/revolution

And Jessica Prentice, founder of the 'Locavore' Movement and author of
FULL MOON FEAST: Food and the Hunger for Connection
e-press kit here: http://www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/fullmoonfeast

Mad Sheep
by Linda Faillace
reviewed by Chris Walters for ACRES

Most people remember the character of Inspector Javert, the policeman in
Victor Hugo's/ Les Misérables/ whose relentless pursuit of Jean Valjean
makes a hash of justice, fairness and decency. Hugo's point is
impossible to miss: Javert's mania for the letter of the law is a kind
of madness that moves him to murder its spirit.

The Faillace family had the misfortune of attracting their very own
Javert in 1998, when Larry and Linda, who bred and raised sheep with the
help of their three children, were asked to meet with a USDA
functionary. They assumed it was something to do with scrapie
prevention. The Faillaces had cooperated with the national effort to
wipe out the brain-wasting disorder -- a prion disease in the same class
as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a.k.a. Mad Cow disease -- when they
endured years of agonizing regulatory delays while assembling their herd
of rare sheep, bred from imported livestock. Taking no chances, they
went the USDA one better by nudging state agriculture officials to
activate Vermont's scrapie prevention program, which until then had
existed only on paper.
Linda Faillace remembers thinking cheerful thoughts about the person
they were to meet, a senior staff veterinarian with the USDA's Animal
Plant Health Inspection Service named Linda Detwiler, who was known for
her involvement with the sheep industry.
"Now she was coming to see our operation, I told Larry, to congratulate
us on doing such a great job: importing excellent, healthy sheep from
Europe and New Zealand, getting the scrapie program up and running in
Vermont, and stimulating the sheep industry, particularly the dairy
sheep sector. But Larry disagreed. Something was niggling at him. 'This
does not feel good,' he said."
Larry might have suspected that no good deed goes unpunished.
Nevertheless, the real topic of the meeting came as a shock. Detwiler
informed the Faillaces that the USDA believed their sheep might be
harboring a variant of BSE, and they would have to suspend operation
immediately. The implications were dire. An infected herd would have to
be destroyed, and with it would go the family's fortunes as well as
their emotional attachment to animals that were never raised for
slaughter. The Faillaces reminded Detwiler that no sheep anywhere in the
world had ever been found carrying a transmissible spongiform
encephalopathy other than scrapie; moreover, they kept detailed records
of every sheep's entire lifespan which proved that the USDA's claim was
not only unlikely but impossible. Detwiler said she had information she
could not divulge.
With that, the Faillaces were plunged into the American version of your
basic Kafkaesque nightmare. By the time their worst fears had come to
pass with the seizure of their flock early in 2001, they were lied to,
spied on by federal agents, and run through a legal wringer. The USDA
secured its final victory with the aid of a researcher whose laboratory
was later exposed as a filthy mess, overrun with uncaged research mice.
Larry and Linda Faillace had devoted their lives to raising happy
children and fine animals. If they had been cynical people or at least
schooled in bureaucratic warfare, they would have hired a fierce
practitioner of Washington, D.C., blood sport the day after that first
meeting, and they might have prevailed. As it was, they fought the
agency with skill and persistence that must have surprised Detwiler, her
unseen superiors, and the business interests that manipulate the USDA
from the shadows.
The agency had picked a fight with the wrong couple. Larry had a Ph.D.
in animal physiology and Linda knew TSEs from her experience working as
an assistant to a British scientist in the early '90s, when Larry taught
at the University of Nottingham. They knew the horror of the British Mad
Cow epidemic at first hand, they knew the USDA's safeguards against BSE
were grossly inadequate, and they had every reason to believe the agency
was engaged in covering its bases, to use the polite term. But they
never reckoned on the malign nexus of Detwiler's personal ambition, the
ethical squalor of an agency that had spent decades collaborating with
the industry it was supposed to regulate, and the current bureaucratic
police state. The story behind the USDA's vendetta remains untold as the
Faillace's lawsuit against the agency goes into discovery. Doubtless it
will confirm the pithy words of another French writer, Honor é de
Balzac: "Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies."

This is an infuriating book in many respects. Although Linda Detwiler
has gone on to a career consulting for fast food chains, the usual gang
of idiots is still in charge at the USDA. But it is also a compelling
book, because Linda Faillace never lets her anger interfere with her
careful rendering of the facts. She's a born storyteller who might
consider a sideline as an author of political thrillers --/ Mad Sheep/
is one of those books that makes going to sleep at a decent hour
unthinkable.

-- Chris Walters

/Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family Farm,/ by
Linda Faillace, hardcover, 352 pages. Cost $25. This book is published
by Chelsea Green Publishing Company, ISBN 1-93-339209-6.


Booklist 9/15

If this were a novel, you probably wouldn't believe it. But the story of
a Vermont farming family driven out of business by a government agency
is true-and truly frightening. When the Faillaces (author Linda and her
husband, Larry) went into the sheep-farming business, they followed
every USDA guideline. Then, once their operation was running, that same
agency told them their sheep would have to be destroyed because they
might spread "mad cow" disease. Despite the Faillaces' abundant proof
that their sheep were disease free-and, moreover, posed no risk
whatsoever-the USDA forcibly shut the farm down. The agency's actions
ultimately had nothing to do with the health of the Faillaces' sheep but
much to do with the health of the American beef industry, which could be
adversely affected if people believed there was mad cow in the U.S. The
author has every right to be bitter, but she maintains an even tone,
presenting us with the evidence and letting us see what happened and
why. But if you can read the book without getting mad, you're not
reading it carefully.
 -/David Pitt
/*Mad Sheep
The True Story Behind the
USDA's War on a Family Farm
By Linda Faillace
*Contact: Alice Blackmer 703-443-9418 blackmer@chelseagreen.com

*A gripping story of one family's fight against the USDA
*MAD SHEEP is the long-awaited story of a family farm destroyed by the
USDA in its effort to protect beef industry sales from the threat of Mad
Cow disease. It is an unforgettable chapter in the latter-day history of
the family farm.
 Linda Faillace, scientist, farmer, wife, and mother of three tells the
harrowing story of corruption, gun-toting federal agents, and
heart-breaking loss with amazing clarity and skill.
 Though no sheep had ever contracted Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
(BSE) or "mad cow" diseases, the US government at the behest of the US
beef industry decided to show the world that it was serious about
preventing an outbreak of the disease in the United States. At first
blush the connection between the Faillace operation and this
governmental goal seem unrelated. They would remain so, even as the USDA
began putting together a trumped up case against the Vermont operation.
First, officials claimed there was a possibility the Faillace sheep had
scrapie, a disease similar to BSE that infects sheep. They decreed that
the sheep would have to be destroyed.
 But the Faillace's had documentation to show that their sheep came from
scrapie-free flocks. Linda and Larry, scientists both, studied BSE and
scrapie disease extensively while working at the University of
Nottingham in England. They were able to present concrete evidence that
it was impossible for their sheep to have BSE. But Linda Detweiler of
the USDA-now working for McDonald's and Wendy's-and the agency she ran
refused to budge. The Faillace sheep were slaughtered to prevent the
spread of BSE in America .
 Larry and Linda Faillace dreamed of having a small dairy sheep farm
where their children could work along side them and create a family
business. They discovered a niche with high-yield dairy sheep from
Europe. They carefully researched and untangled all the regulations
regarding the importation of sheep and soon had a thriving
entrepreneurial business. Then, one day, the needs of big business and
government corruption colluded to bring their operation to a screeching
halt.
The USDA created a straw man to protect the beef industry-that straw man
was a family. This is their story.
 *Linda Faillace*worked as a secretary, store clerk, lab technician,
song writer, piano teacher, and astrologer, before embarking on a career
in sheep farming and cheese making. The Faillaces live in Warren, Vermont.
Available September 2006 | Hardcover | $25.00 | 1-933392-09-6 | 6 X 9,
352 pages
For more information, please visit www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/madsheep


   "From the hearthside warmth of children farmer-entrepreneurs to the
arrogant, hardhearted, tyranny of government bureaucracy, Mad Sheep
touches the soul with tears and righteous anger. Though it reads like a
fiction political thriller, this story of intrigue, bureaucratic
falsehoods, and tyranny is true. Linda Faillace gives Americans yet
another reason to mistrust every official announcement from the United
States Department of Agriculture."

  --*Joel Salatin*, founder of Polyface Farm and author of You Can Farm:
The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise,
recently profiled in The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan


"[Mad Sheep] shows how far a corrupt government agency will go to
protect industry. This is a truly Kafkaesque story."   -*Dr. Tom
Pringle*, founder, Sperling Foundation

"Mad Sheep documents the ugliest display of governmental ass-covering
and the manipulation of questionable scientific data for political
purposes that I have ever read. It will make your blood boil."

                                          -*Gene Logsdon*, organic
farmer and author of/ The Contrary Farmer/ among many others
"Mad Sheep will enrage you. The real crazies in this true and tragic
tale are the bureaucratic bullies who tortured and tormented heroic
Vermont farmers while allowing a deadly dementia-mad cow disease-to
emerge in America . The sheep are dead, lives destroyed, mad cow disease
here, and the worst is that these bunglers are still running the show."
                                                                              
                     -*John
Stauber*, co-author, Mad Cow U.S.A.

_______________________________________________


Fresh and Local CSA
Shepherdstown, WV
www.freshandlocalcsa.com

--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
Venaura Farm
lfl@intrex.net
info@market-farming.com
IM: lawrence.london@pandion.be & lfl@amber.org.uk
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