Comment from jean public

USDA Knew It Was Destroying Healthy Sheep Also in connection with the lawsuit, Dr. Linda Detwiler USDA's expert on TSEs was deposed (testified via affidavit, not removed from her position) in 2007 and stood by every statement she had made during the course of the action against the Vermont shepherds. Others at USDA were deposed as well, but declined to answer several questions. By June of 2007 there were four major areas of questioning still unanswered by USDA in the depositions. At this point Freeman considered pulling the plug on the lawsuit, but in the end persisted. In June of 2008, the judge in the case ruled that USDA was compelled to answer the remaining questions and in July of 2008, Detwiler was again deposed; this time with different answers. In the course of Detwiler's deposition, the Faillaces learned that in 2000 the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa had re-tested the Freeman's sheep that were positive according to the Rubenstein lab and they proved negative. USDA knew this and seized over four hundred Vermont sheep and killed them all anyway. Was It Safe To Trust USDA? According to the Faillaces, these results were withheld from three federal court cases, several FOIA requests by the Faillaces and were only released in 2008—seven years after the sheep were seized and killed. It was revealed later that in 2007 USDA received preliminary results from an ELISA test from Weybridge that was negative in both cases. They also learned that the preliminary results from Weybridge on the mouse bioassay were also negative. As mentioned above, the final test results released to USDA in 2009 were also negative. In addition, the Faillaces learned from the Detwiler deposition that the Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, was never told of the many negative test results, but was only told of the tainted positive ones from the Rubinstein Lab.