Ontario shepherd's PR campaign doesn't faze CFIA or sheep producers elsewhere

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Alberta sheep rancher Patric Lyster believes his Ontario counterpart's flock should be destroyed because a ewe she sold him tested positive for scrapie. But Hastings shepherd Montana Jones is resisting to protect her rare breed

by DON STONEMAN

Alberta sheep rancher Patric Lyster thinks the public sympathy for Hastings County shepherd Montana Jones' condemned sheep in Ontario is misplaced. "The public doesn't have the information" he says.

Statements from livestock associations that are concerned about possible effects on trade or the contamination of other sheep by an infected flock, he says, "don't see the light of day" in the mainstream press that has publicized Jones' cause.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) wants to destroy susceptible animals in Jones' Shropshire flock because they may be a source of scrapie. Scrapie has been a reportable disease since 1945. The CFIA says the eradication program, which used to remove entire flocks when one infected animal was found, was refocused in 2004 using new genetic tools and traceability. Jones has gained notoriety, and widespread support, because of the publicity campaign she mounted.

She claims that her Shropshires are a rare breed, that there are relatively few registered in Canada and that the genetics should be preserved. A part of her flock with a genetically susceptible genotype was reported missing the morning in early April that they were to be shipped and destroyed.

"Beats me," says Jones when asked how they were stolen from her Wholearth farm. She has denied knowledge of who took the sheep. "Maybe I wasn't here" when the sheep were taken, she adds.

Lyster, thousands of miles away on Coyote Acres Ranch at Halkirk, Alta, is tied to the case. Jones' flock came under scrutiny after a ewe she sold to Lyster in 2007 inexplicably died in 2009 and was subsequently diagnosed with scrapie.

Scrapie was diagnosed in Lyster's flock several years previously. He dealt with the mandatory culling and says his flock numbers were up to strength again in two years. He describes the preemptive culling as "like vaccination. You don't wait until you have the disease" to get a shot. "It's all based on what the level of risk is."

Lyster, a breeder for 35 years, feels he has been badly treated in the publicity surrounding the planned destruction of the Jones herd. He says he has come under widespread criticism and some Jones supporters blame him as a source of the scrapie that killed the ewe he bought from Jones. Lyster stresses that, while it is not a 100 per cent certainty that the scrapie originated with Jones' flock, "the science says" that scrapie is most likely to be contracted during the first nine months of life. The ewe Jones sold Lyster was 14 months, and Lyster has had no other cases of scrapie since.

Lyster says Jones could have protected the genetics by breeding her most scrapie-susceptible ewes to less susceptible rams and kept their offspring as part of a pilot project. She could also have arranged for CFIA to collect and keep semen from the rams, but at her own cost. Money seems to be an issue for Jones since before the scrapie diagnosis.

Ironically, with all of the discussion about the low numbers of registered Shropshires, sheep from Jones' farm haven't been registered with the Canadian Livestock Records Corporation for several years before the scrapie quarantine. Jones told Better Farming that paying utility bills took a priority at one point. That's also why she didn't take part in the scrapie eradication program.

Lyster says that Jones' strategy for saving her flock has been deleterious to the breed as a whole.
"She has made it so that people in Ontario and eastern Canada "don't want to buy Shropshire. That really helps the breed," he adds sarcastically.

Representing Jones is Belleville-based Karen Selick, litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which describes itself as "a registered charity, independent and non-partisan, which defends constitutional freedoms through education and litigation."

The Foundation's cases in Western Canada include land claims by natives. In Ontario, the Foundation is defending a Russell County store owner against a municipal bylaw specifying the language he must have on his story signs. The foundation has also been "assisting" raw milk advocate Michael Schmidt of Durham, who is fighting a conviction last year for selling and distributing raw milk.

Jones says scrapie "is not a reflection of a producer's management technique in any way," adding that "my position is that I do not want to see a flock wiped out needlessly. There are other measures to take to control risk."

However, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency disagrees with Jones about the need and about the "other measures." Dr. Penny Greenwood, National Manager, Animal Health and Welfare Management, Terrestrial Animal Health Division, says the sheep that were "allegedly stolen" were about to lamb and can spread "a huge volume" of infective prions into the environment with their body fluids at birth.

The border remains closed to breeding sheep and goat exports since BSE was found a cow in Canada in 2003. "One of the critical things our trading partners are watching is how well we control all the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, including scrapie," says Greenwood.

"The fact that we have an unknown premise that is potentially contaminated with scrapie and a group of high-risk animals that could be infected with this disease not under our control and potentially spreading this disease further in Canada is not going to be viewed well by our international partners. It does not build the case to get that border open."  

Jones responds that the United Kingdom has run a scrapie eradication program for many years and now rues the genetics that were lost. But Greenwood says that the Canadian program already improves upon the U.K. and French programs, where they opted to genotype and eliminate all genetically susceptible sheep and to breed for resistance. Greenwood says there is a possibility that scrapie will mutate and strike the sheep previously thought resistant.

However, Canada's scrapie problem isn't at the same level as in Europe, Greenwood says. That's why Canada is only using the genotyping tool on a premise where scrapie has been identified.

The genotype issue is crucial. In late April, Selick announced that Jones has filed a federal court application for judicial review of the order to destroy those 31 sheep that went missing. "There are numerous grounds," Selick wrote in a release. "Some relate to the abuse of discretionary power, some to the Canadian Bill of Rights, and some to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

On top of that, Selick wrote, "The law authorizes the forced destruction of individual suspected animals. It doesn't mention genotypes."

Jones still had sheep on her farm that weren't scheduled for destruction and weren't spirited away. In late April, one of those ewes died and tested positive for scrapie. It was of a genotype not considered to be susceptible to scrapie. The CFIA destroyed nine more sheep and tested them for scrapie. They were negative.

Greenwood says the fact that a single non-susceptible ewe was positive for scrapie means that the disease found in Lyster's ewe in Alberta most likely originated at Wholearth farm and the most likely source is the sheep that were, in her words, "allegedly stolen." She adds that some mostly young animals from Jones' farm were slaughtered March 28 and tested at the insistence of the owner and her lawyer.

Lyster says "I don't need to feel vindicated" over this development.

Jones says the single positive scrapie test is a sham in reaction to Selick's request for a judicial review of the destroy order. Meanwhile, more animals are being tested.

Greenwood says sheep under 12 months of age can be shipped for food even if they are from a quarantined facility. "This allows the producer to continue to function normally." "There was no expectation" the young animals would test positive for scrapie, Greenwood says. Nevertheless, she says that Jones and her lawyer wanted them tested. CFIA picked up the cost of $300 per animal.

The Canadian Sheep Federation supports the policies of the CFIA. "Scrapie eradication is essential to the long-term sustainability of the Canadian sheep industry and, as such, the Canadian Sheep Federation supports the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's scrapie eradication measures" says a press release issued shortly after those 31 sheep slated for destruction were "allegedly stolen," as Greenwood puts it, from Jones' farm on April 2 the same day they were slated for destruction. BF