by SUSAN MANN
Miro Malish of Chesley says he wasn’t the one who brought Montana Jones’ quarantined Shropshire sheep to his farm in Bruce County from her farm near Peterborough.
And he couldn’t say how they got there. “I saw the farmer bring them but besides that I have no idea of how they got here, or about the organization that brought them here or how they were taken or anything like that,” Malish said, adding he’s cooperating with the authorities.
Malish said he has nothing to do with “Farmers Peace Corp,” the group or person claiming responsibility for taking the sheep from Jones’ Wholearth Farmstudio premises near Peterborough sometime overnight in early April. The Northumberland Ontario Provincial Police are investigating the theft.
Jones couldn’t be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Karen Selick, litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, said in an email Tuesday the Canadian Food Inspection Agency isn’t telling them very much.
Meanwhile local Bruce County sheep farmers and the sheep industry fully support the CFIA in its efforts to eradicate scrapie from Canada. It’s a fatal neurological disease of sheep and goats but it doesn’t pose a human health risk. The CFIA said in a June 8 press release it quarantined the farm where the sheep were found and will be taking further disease control measures there but didn’t say what those were.
Vince Stutzki, a large commercial operator from Paisley and chair of the Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency’s District 2 (Grey and Bruce counties), said local producers are very concerned about the situation. There’s a very large sheep population in the two counties and the fact that potentially infected sheep have been in the area with some still missing “is holding the red meat industry hostage.”
He said pork and beef farmers are also concerned that if this issue isn’t dealt with properly, trading partners may close their borders to trade in livestock and meat.
Stutzki predicts the protocol for dealing with a flock with scrapie will change. No one expected that a flock of sheep would be spirited away. “It’s a mess and it’s very disappointing,” he added.
Malish’s farm isn’t a sheep operation. He said he’s looking to develop the property as a community sponsored agricultural program primarily “around culture and the arts as a way of developing consciousness around the backdrop of agricultural sustainability.”
For him, it was “good just to have animals around,” he said, noting he wanted the space to be used so he could observe and learn rather than taking on the responsibility and having to spend the capital on a full-fledged farming operation.
Malish said so far he hasn’t been charged by the police. “I’m sure if they want to lay charges they will.”
Malish added he didn’t want to aggravate the authorities.
Malish said the sheep were found on Wednesday, June 6 and removed from his farm Monday, June 11. He said he couldn’t say how many sheep there were. But Guy Gravelle, CFIA senior media relations, confirmed in an email Tuesday the agency euthanized 26 adult sheep and 11 lambs so they can be tested for scrapie.
The sheep found on Malish’s farm were part of a group of 31 animals quarantined on Jones’ farm and were slated to be euthanized April 2 so they could be tested for scrapie. But the night before, the group or person going by the name “Farmers Peace Corp” took the sheep from Jones’ Wholearth Farmstudio premises, leaving a note saying the animals were in protective custody and the owner didn’t participate or know about the action.
The CFIA and the OPP are working together to determine what happened to the remaining sheep, Gravelle said Tuesday.
Officials from both organizations remain tight-lipped about many details involving the case as the police investigation is continuing. Questions, such as how CFIA found the sheep and how they knew the ones they found belonged to Jones weren’t answered. BF
(With files from Better Farming staff)
Comments
I don't see how you can report that “local Bruce County sheep farmers and the sheep industry fully support the CFIA” unless you have canvassed a significant number of local Bruce County sheep farmers. One person’s opinion on the subject hardly seems conclusive.
The one thing I learned early on while representing Montana Jones was that sheep and goat producers (goats are also subject to scrapie) are not unified on this issue, or indeed on many other issues. Many of the producers who are supposedly represented by the large industry organizations had no wish to join those large organizations. They joined smaller groups, but the smaller groups then became affiliated with larger ones, and all of a sudden the small ruminant industry supposedly speaks with one voice. It actually doesn’t. There’s a lot of dissent among farmers. Don’t confuse them with their sheep.
Government bureaucrats at the CFIA find it a lot easier to deal with a single organization rather than having to take into account the widely varying views of many producers. Therefore, they foster and promote the idea that the large industry organizations genuinely represent the views of all their members. You end up with one large bureaucracy dealing with another large bureaucracy. The voices of the individual members are ignored.
As for the concern that “potentially infected sheep have been in the area”—well, scrapie is not transmitted by blowing in the wind. The veterinarians who came and went from Montana Jones’ farm did not routinely clean or change their boots or decontaminate their vehicles when they were leaving. If scrapie were as easily transmissible as your article makes it sound, then the CFIA vets would have been contaminating a large portion of central Ontario.
The Shropshire sheep that were stolen have quite a distinctive appearance. Shropshires are not common in Grey or Bruce counties. There are no registered Shropshire breeders located there. If some extra sheep had wandered into someone’s flock in Grey or Bruce county, it should have been quite apparent to the farmers.
Please refer to my previous comments on the futility of the scrapie eradication program, posted here: http://www.betterfarming.com/online-news/shropshire-sheep-found-5511#com...
Karen Selick,
Canadian Constitution Foundation
Clearly the writer did not do much research for this article. There is a ton of information out there on this case, yet none of it was cited or even mentioned. For one thing, not one of the sheep killed before the 'sheep-napping' incident was found to have Scrapie. For another thing, it is not necessary to kill the animal to conduct testing for Scrapie. The CFIA acted in a heavy-handed, typically narrow-minded, bureaucratic manner, wasting a pile of tax-payers money and man-hours on this case. It is utterly shameful to support this action with such an article.
Robert Bright
Canadian Consumer Raw Milk Advocacy Group
https://www.facebook.com/#!/CanadianConsumerRawMilkAdvocacy
Editor's note: This is the latest of seven stories we have published about this situation. As reported in our April 30, 2012 story, a sheep from the farm was in fact found to be positive for scrapie.
Sheep producers do not support
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