Rally will protest removal of farmer's sheep

Thursday, March 29, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is planning to remove and euthanize 41 apparently healthy sheep, including 20 pregnant ewes, from Shropshire sheep breeder Montana Jones’ Hastings-area farm Monday.

Jones has asked supporters to wear black and be at the farm, called Wholearth Farmstudio, at 8 a.m. Monday to show disapproval for the CFIA’s actions and the “draconian legislation enabling them to slaughter 41 apparently healthy sheep,” it says in a press release from the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a registered, independent, non-partisan charity that defends Canadians’ constitutional freedoms through education, communication and litigation.

Supporters have been advised that hindering or obstructing CFIA officials could cost them up to $250,000 in fines and two years in jail. Jones has also been told if she defies the destruction order she could face the same fine and jail time, the release says.

The sheep euthanasia is being done as part of the federal government’s $4.5 million scrapie eradication program. Scrapie affects sheep productivity and longevity but is not transmissible to humans.

In an email, CFIA spokesperson Lisa Gauthier says “in this particular case the animals will be euthanized by a CFIA veterinarian offsite.”

Gauthier says the Canadian government is committed to protecting animal health and “takes the management of scrapie in sheep and goats seriously.”

The CFIA recognizes the difficulty “this process has caused the producer and continues to work directly with her to maintain a co-operative relationship. This process will be carried out as humanely as possible,” Gauthier says.

When told of CFIA’s comments about carrying out the process humanely and maintaining a cooperative relationship, Jones says that’s not true.

Karen Selick, foundation litigation director and Jones’ lawyer, says by email the CFIA has changed its position three times on where it’s planning to kill the sheep. As late as March 27 the CFIA instructed Jones to dig a large grave because they would be killing the sheep on the farm. As the grave was being dug on March 30, the CFIA emailed and said they’d slaughter them off the farm.

Jones says agency officials have told her they want to truck the sheep to a dead stock and pet food facility outside of Ottawa, a four-hour drive away.

“I spent 12 years with them and out of respect for the sheep I don’t want them stressed,” she explains, noting she wants them buried on her farm and officials had agreed to that. “They’re pregnant.”

All of the condemned animals were tested by the CFIA in live biopsies and were found to be negative for scrapie. None of the animals has shown any clinical symptoms of the disease in the 12 years Jones has been raising sheep, the press release says.

Selick says the CFIA has told them the live biopsy tests are only 85 per cent accurate. The CFIA says the only way to know for sure if there is scrapie among the 41 sheep is to kill them and examine their brains.

But Selick says a scholarly article she sent to CFIA officials on a similar disease that occurs in wild deer, called chronic wasting disease, points out that just relying on brain testing could result in 10 to 15 per cent of the cases being missed because the disease is spread throughout the body and is not in the brain.

A single sheep, with tattoo number WHE 24S, born on Jones’ farm and sold to an Alberta farm in 2007 was discovered to have scrapie about three years later. “But scientists cannot accurately determine when or where it acquired the infection,” the foundation’s press release says.

CFIA veterinarians say symptoms of scrapie normally appear within two to five years, the foundation’s press release says. They have condemned the 41 sheep even though none of them had contact with WHE 24S for almost five years and 37 of them weren’t even born until after WHE 24S had left the farm.

Jones’ farm has been under quarantine since January 2009, which has caused her great financial hardship. “I should be on welfare but I won’ t apply for it,” she says. The CFIA’s order to euthanize the sheep off the farm will cost her an additional couple of thousand dollars for trucking, disposal, and for the dead stock facility.

Her Wholearth flock of rare Shropshire sheep is made up of genetics dating back to breeding stock imported from the United Kingdom in the late 1800s.

The condemned sheep are from an endangered breed and some are due to have lambs soon. Killing the ewes would reduce the number of Shropshire ewes in Canada to 107.

CFIA officials have rejected several alternative risk control measures Jones has offered and ignored nearly 3,000 Canadians who petitioned them to stop.

Jones has asked to be allowed to retain a portion of each slaughtered sheep’s obex so she can have them independently tested. CFIA has told her she can’t have them.

Jones and Selick have documented numerous errors by CFIA officials and are concerned the agency’s results could be inaccurate. BF