Word: slaughterings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...southwestern English county of Devon lie fallow, its 70 head of cattle close to worthless. He can't find a buyer for the ancestral farm, which he is now desperate to sell. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has turned the verdant countryside into a gruesome field of slaughter. The prevailing sound is the crack of pistol shots felling livestock. Farms appear barren save for the smoldering pyres on which hundreds of perfectly healthy animals were incinerated last week. So far McInnes' herd has avoided infection, which means he still has a chance to unload the farm and "pack...
...Portugal. Possible symptoms of the disease were reported in Belgium. Although initial tests for the virus on a pig farm near the town of Diksmuide were negative, all 323 pigs-75 of them British imports-were destroyed and transportation of live farm animals was banned. Germany ordered the slaughter of all sheep, goats and deer imported from the U.K. since Feb. 1. France decreed that 50,000 sheep be destroyed-at least twice as many as the number of animals culled in Britain itself. European Muslims prepared to celebrate the festival of Eid al Adha without its main ritual...
...Given Europe's familiarity with the disease, why didn't governments vaccinate their livestock against it? The answer is that they did, and were successful in keeping the disease in check-until 1990, when the E.U. decided to adopt the British approach to prevention: immediate slaughter of animals thought to be infected. Why? British vets say vaccines can actually make testing for disease more difficult, since it is impossible to tell whether an animal's antibodies come from the vaccine or the virus. And even vaccinated animals can harbor the live virus for up to two years. Says David Tyson...
...immediate spark to the slaughter can be identified: a murder in Kereng Pangi, a small village near Sampit. A group of Madurese allegedly tortured and then killed a young Dayak in December after a gambling dispute. The murderers, Dayak community leaders say, bribed police and escaped to Madura...
...There is a rivalry between the police and army, a divide deepened when the two were formally split by President Wahid last year. Last Tuesday in Sampit, in the midst of communal slaughter, the army and the mobile police renewed their internecine rivalry. Exactly how the shooting began remains unclear, but after a six-hour, armed standoff, two people had died and 10 were wounded, including the directorate head of Sampit's police, who was shot twice in the back and is still in critical condition. One of those killed was a Madurese refugee. So much for help from Jakarta...