“Sheep believed to be resistant to scrapie are succumbing to atypical infections and a newly identified strain of the disease. Eradication programmes based on selective breeding should be reappraised.” From the experts in prion research…
CFIA
Shepherd obtains false government document
PRESS RELEASE May 1st, 2012—Hastings, Ontario/The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) released a statement Friday claiming that a single sheep belonging to a quarantined Ontario farm has tested positive for scrapie. The sheep’s owner suspects the finding was pre-ordained. For over two years shepherd Montana Jones has maintained that the CFIA has not provided evidence […]
CFIA raids farm to seize and kill 9 Shropshire sheep
On Friday, April 27 at approximately 7:15 p.m., four CFIA agents and 2 security guards arrived at Montana Jones’ Hastings Ontario farm with an order for the destruction of 9 Shropshire sheep that remained on the farm after 31 sheep went missing earlier this month. They left two vehicles “guarding” the premises overnight. The CFIA inspectors returned Saturday, April 28 at 8:00 a.m., loaded up the 9 sheep, 8 of which were due to have lambs, and drove them approximately four hours to slaughter in Nepean.
Ewes vs. Them
The owner of a rare heritage Shropshire sheep flock is taking Canada’s Minister of Agriculture and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to court. Shepherd Montana Jones has filed a federal court application for judicial review of the Order of Destruction that CFIA issued to kill her 31 apparently healthy sheep…20 which are pregnant and due to lamb….
Leave them alone, and they’ll come home….
It’s been over 2 weeks.
I miss my sheep, and my sheep are still missing…but still not safe. If and when Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) finds them—they will kill them.
After 27 months of uncertainty I want some kind of resolution. The sheep need resolution. Death hovers like a wooly cloud over my beautiful pregnant ewes…they’re out there somewhere about to lamb in an unfamiliar place, with an unfamiliar face.
DoubleSpeak from Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz
Does Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz have difficulty communicating…or understanding concepts? Clearly the facts are not his strong point. His long awaited letter says a great deal of…nothing. He did not respond to a single issue I raised concerning the CFIA’s proposed destruction of 44 rare heritage Shropshire sheep that have all tested negative for scrapie. He merely recited some generic lines which don’t address any of the questions in my letter to him. Clearly he is not listening to the 2,700 and growing petitioners who want to prevent Canada’s heritage sheep from extinction.
This is his response received two months later, I have put my concerns underlined in brackets:
Agri-speak
The sheep are not this tall, and I am not this short…I’m kneeling with the fluffy flock last winter, with Australian Cattle Dog Pi at right.
So…had a discouraging phone meeting today with my MP…he had a ‘very brief’ conversation with Agriculture Canada Minister Gerry Ritz last week. Clearly, our Minister of Agriculture is not fully informed nor even slightly knowledgeable on sheep nor scrapie nor genetics. This Goliath doesn’t even communicate in the same language…shouldn’t he know a little something about an agricultural matter his government has just spent 4.5 million dollars to ‘look into’? He’ll have to be educated before he can even enter into any discussion on the matter , and time is running out.
#1 on CFIA’s Hit List—Avril
Meet the Flockers on Death Row
This is Wholearth Avril 8N, one of our pregnant flock ewes who is on the hit list to be killed by CFIA. She will be 8 years old this spring, when she is due to have lambs…maybe even triplets like last year! If CFIA lets her live, she could very well live to be 14 like her dear old Dad Miller (Kelsey Miller 1F). She is a wonderful heritage combination of genetics, out of an Ed Jackson ewe 3L.
Miller’s 1,340 signatures
(Update March 14, 2015: Over 11,000 now!) We’ve reached 1,340 signatures in just three days since launching the site, the petiton, and the campaign to stop CFIA and Agriculture Canada from destroying our healthy flock of Shropshire sheep. We will keep going…pass on the link to sign the petition. Meet Miller…he is the essence behind […]