THE GUARDIAN 7/11/2000 - Adopt a sheep on the internet
Special report:
the BSE crisis
Rory Carroll
in Rome
Do you no
longer feel sure about what is safe to eat? From today you
can log on to the internet, adopt a sheep, watch it graze
and have its cheese, wool, and even its droppings posted to
your door.
An organic
farm in central Italy has decided to rent its flock of 1,300
sheep to city dwellers fretting about mad cow disease, its
ovine equivalent scrapie, and genetic modification.
For £110 you
get a 12-month renewable contract to choose a sheep, name it
and monitor its output of 5kg of cheese, four pairs of socks
and two pairs of leggings, as well as its plant-fertilising
droppings.
Should the
produce not meet expectations, clients have the right to
turn the sheep into mutton.
Manuela Cozza,
the owner of Porta dei Parchi, an agritourism centre in the
Abruzzo region, said the produce from each sheep would on
average be worth £140.
"We will make
a short-term loss, but the idea is to give people in the
cities a new sense of faith in what we are doing. There has
been so much bad news recently, we had to do something," she
said.
"Clients will
once again have direct contact with the origins of what they
eat.
"The clients
will see our standards and know that it is not mass
produced."
The website
asca.dimmidove.com will feature a newsletter and show
pictures of shearing and transhumance, the seasonal moving
of flocks to new pastures.
The farm,
which has an annual turnover of £125,000, is near the remote
village of Anversa degli Abruzzo, which borders a national
park.
The
agriculture minister, Alfonso Peccoraro Scanio, nipped in
early to adopt a ewe called Medina.
The minister -
whose middle name means shepherd in Italian - said he was
not tempted by the 60 goats also up for adoption.
But he told
Italy Daily: "What convinced me to set an example was that
this project recreates a direct contact between the producer
and the buyer, and restores the client's confidence in the
quality of produce - something that was lost with mass
production and distribution."
But the scheme
cannot guarantee customers that their food is entirely safe,
Ms Cozza said.
"There are a
lot of wolves in Abruzzo."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,393652,00.html
