Scottish Woman Finally Gives Up Sheep for Culling

Five pet sheep that had been kept barricaded in a Scottish living room to spare them from the foot-and-mouth cull were slaughtered Friday.

Their owner, Carolyn Hoffe, was shown on television weeping outside her home in the village of Glasserton in southwest Scotland after the sheep had been killed.

She had locked herself and her animals in her home several days earlier, but after talking with veterinary officers and police she allowed them inside to kill the animals, which did not have the disease.

“I can confirm that the animals have been put to sleep by injection,” a spokesman for the Scottish Executive said.

Hoffe’s bid to save the sheep was the focus of intense media attention after a white calf won a last-minute reprieve because of a change in government policy. The calf, dubbed “Phoenix,” was found alive under a mound of dead cattle.

Millions of farm animals have been slaughtered in Britain since the outbreak of the highly contagious disease. Many of them were healthy but were destroyed anyway because they were considered a possible risk.

The government’s policy of mass slaughter was widely criticized in rural areas as unnecessarily draconian. It was eased late last month because the number of new cases of the disease was dropping.