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

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.

Better Farming - June/July 2012