[Fleecewife]

Anke - you type more quickly than I do, and this says pretty much the same thing as you have  (this is happening more frequently to me - must learn to type faster  )

I think it's just an illustration of a point - putting all your eggs in one basket.  We have thought of this with Hebridean sheep, which are found only in Great Britain (apart from one or two flocks in the Netherlands).  It is always better to have a second and third population on the other side of the world, in case of a disease outbreak - not necessarily one we already know about.  For the Shetland Breed, there are plenty of animals in North America.
There seems to be an ongoing rivalry between those who live on the Shetland Islands and those who live on mainland Britain, where the Shetland Breed is concerned.  On Shetland, the breed is their commercial sheep, in the rest of Britain it is a minority breed, once rare, so people's attitudes to their sheep will be different.

I am surprised that the Shetland Meat /Wool  name is only being used by a tiny handful of organic breeders on the Islands - I think the rest of the sheep farmers on Shetland have far more reason to be annoyed by that than we do on mainland Britain.

[sabrina]

In my opion Shetland Sheep that are born and raised on the Island taste far better than the same breed raised on the mainland. Is the wool the same ? The Island ponies have masses of hair to cope with the weather do the sheep have a thicker fleece.?

[Rosemary]

I bet it has to be 'meat from Shetland sheep reared in Devon' 

Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it?

[princesspiggy]

with regard to f&m in shetland - is their no restriction on taking livestock to the islands? i understand that it can be passed on in different ways also, just curious.

[shetlandpaul]

there are vet checks at the port mainly for less infectious things. say one farm was to get it they will run some of there flock on a hill that will have other folks sheep on it. so using the slaughter system that they did in the last foot and mouth outbreak in the uk. the slaughter circle would keep getting bigger as there is lot of diffrent farmers sheep on the same hills. so it would destroy the entire flock on the island the other islands may escape but not likely it would also be very bad news for the shetland cow as well