Farmed and Dangerous - CFIA Destroys a Shepherd's Life and Her Rare Sheep

Man that is so sad to see. What is more sad is that these stories never make it to the front page be it ATS or Mainstream media, do people not care anymore?

I guess most are children who need their hand held by corporate scum.

reply to post by jude11


Canada is America-lite. The police there aren't entirely sociopathic thugs from the experiences I gather, but the whole western world is ill. The United States is like a sick child who spreads it all over. Japan, the EU, and others follow it into the money printing trap. Canada follows its social policy on liberty.

When did this happen? All of the references seem to be from last year. Also, there seems to be more to this story than we are being told.

Stuff like this makes me literally sick to my stomach. Similar things are happening in my hometown currently, though not as drastic as this, and it makes me so angry i cant even speak.

The town I grew up in and currently reside was once a sleepy ranch and form community. I can remember when it only had two stop lights, and there is now too many to count. All of this expansion has taken place over the last ten years or so, though it has seemed to explode over the last 4. The problem seems to be all the "city people" want to move to the country and decide they miss the convience of the city so they turned it into the city they just came from.

Their plans became pretty clear to me last year with the passing of a new city ordinance. You are no longer able to have livestock within city limits, no grandfathering of any kind. Anyone that currently has animals must sell the offspring of those animals and once they die you cannot replace them. Their reasoning for this is that the small acerage (about 20 acres for the sake of argument) is not enough to make a living off of so no more ag-exempt property. All the ranch land is being annexed into the city limits a little at a time and now that they are no longer ag-exempt properties the landowner must pay city taxes. Now the only option the ranchers have to subdivide their property and sell it to developers.

My main problem with this is making a living means different things to different people. Most of these farmers and ranchers make enough money from their land to pay for feed and upkeep because they don't need anything else, but that is all just about gone now. All I see is apartments and subdivisions where I used to hunt and camp.

Originally posted by ShadeWolf
Do any of you understand what scrapie is? It's a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy closely related to BSE, or mad cow disease. Untreatable, fatal, and capable of persisting in soil for an undetermined amount of time. Prion-based, so it's shed in blood, feces, and basically any waste material deposited by the sheep.

Human transmission? Unknown. Mutton isn't eaten as commonly as beef (the source of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans), and prion diseases are notoriously difficult to diagnose, but scrapie is theorized to be the origin of BSE in cows. So yeah, I think this was completely justified, if there's even the slightest risk of a prion disease becoming established in livestock, all possible measures should be taken to contain it.

By your description, it should then be fairly simple to determine whether the herd has scrapie through simple analysis of sheep poo-poo. No need to kill the animals until certain.

I hope she gets compensated and able to breed a new herd. But if the sheep poo-poo is that dangerous then the entire farmland must be decontaminated through the use of disinfectants like formaldehyde.

FFS!! Killing rare breeds because they MIGHT have a disease

Its time to start fighting back people!
When they come for you...it'll be TOO LATE!

Originally posted by ShadeWolf
Do any of you understand what scrapie is? It's a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy closely related to BSE, or mad cow disease. Untreatable, fatal, and capable of persisting in soil for an undetermined amount of time. Prion-based, so it's shed in blood, feces, and basically any waste material deposited by the sheep.

Human transmission? Unknown. Mutton isn't eaten as commonly as beef (the source of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans), and prion diseases are notoriously difficult to diagnose, but scrapie is theorized to be the origin of BSE in cows. So yeah, I think this was completely justified, if there's even the slightest risk of a prion disease becoming established in livestock, all possible measures should be taken to contain it.

Did you ever stop and think about all the chemicals and diseases that factory farm animals have? No, because you think that if it is from the government, it's "safe".

Do you actually think that the government would tell you if their factory cattle have mad cow disease? They would never tell the public, that would ruin their business.

You know what, I bet that half the animals that come from factory farms have some kind of disease.

My concern for the sheep was for the other crop....fleece. I spin and knit.
I don't eat sheep; whether lamb or mutton, it all tastes awful.
But worse than the taste of sheep is the disease BSE, because it has been found to be transmissible from species to species. Variants of this disease has been shown to spread to mink, sheep, cows, and humans. Simple biologic methods used to sanitize do not work...it's a protein, not a germ.
When it something deadly, they have to err on the side of caution.
This time, sadly, they erred.
Imagine they had found the disease. There is an incubation period of years before the disease might show itself in a human. Who would be right if someone did get sick? And how many would have to wait, knowing they might have their brain torn apart by the prion?
It's a no-win situation, unless and until they can identify the disease in individual animals and locales. Something they cannot do now.

Since the didn't find what they were looking for, does she have legal recourse. Again our perverse relationship with animals will be the death of us. Besides all that, she obviously cared deeply for these beings, why is that so hard for people/governments to understands...see previous comment on relationship with other living beings.
Time for us humans to get whats coming to us. Although I am not one of those people, I still say you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.

I was a spinner for years, and beginner weaver too, until arthritis made this difficult, though we're going to be creating some tools to work around this. And agree with the taste of mutton, won't go near it. But, that isn't the issue here, its the way the nazi fascist bullies are walking over everyones sovereign rights and controlling our food to gain absolute control over our life and survival.

the reality of things are
keep a low profile,. dont make waves,. and dont let the government know what you are doing
True healthy remedies are not wanted or approved
True natural cures are not wanted or approved
Anything that is a god given right,. is not approved,.

So,.dont tell or show anything they dont approve of F**k'em

The story in short form is this:
Montana the woman with the sheep was offered a settlement on the sheep. She would have been given cash based on market value for the sheep that the CFIA were going to take. Montana refused.

The only way to test the sheep at this point and time, is to kill the sheep. Only then would they know if those sheep were infected or not. One of Montana's sheep a lamb or a 1 to 2 year old I believe, was sent out to Alberta. That lamb was infected. The lamb was reported to the authorities, as is regulation, like it or not.

The CFIA stepped in and put a quarantine on the sheep. Montana instead of reaching a deal with the CFIA decided to bring the issue to the public. The CFIA deal was taken off the table.

Then the Farmers Peace Corp stepped in, ran by Micheal Schmidt out of Ontario. The same guy who is fighting the government re raw milk charges. He and Montana and a few others cooked up an idea to steal the sheep, who at the time were government property, on the night or the night before the Government were to come and get/kill the sheep.

The Government looked for months for those sheep, and when they were found they brought charges against Montana and Micheal and all the others that helped.

You want to steal Government property then tough, pay the price and don't whine!

Yes it's sucks the only way to tell if sheep are infected is to kill them. Had Montana played fair with the Government she would have lost a lot less sheep.

Had the sheep been infected, this story could have had a lot worse ending. Not only for Montana but for all the sheep and goats they were around. Other farmers need to be protected as well.

When disease is involved in livestock we don't have to like it but sometimes the animals must die in order to save the many. This was not about rare sheep, it was about livestock safety,

The Government spent a lot of money trying to find those sheep, I hope the lot of them end up in Jail! That was tax payer money spent, not very cool. They have been brought up on criminal charges and over $100,000 in fines have been laid against them.

Make no mistake I am not pro Government, but I don't like what Montana and Micheal did. They did this to themselves.

re the government offer:
was it 18 cents a pound?
that would suck
they sell the stuff for 18 to 20 bucks a lb - see below



Re supporting a local farmer via "gate sales" in Ontario
lamb:
One half lamb at 7.50 pound cut and wrapped in harvest season

Honest to god real lamb shiskies here i come

For more than 35 years, the New Zealand Lamb Company has been the leading marketer of Iamb products in North America. Owned by a consortium of international meat companies, the New Zealand Lamb Company is in the unique position of having direct production supply channels.

www.nzlamb.ca...

He that the beef-oriented organization is getting involved in today's lamb price disaster because the sheep market is a very obvious example of packers manipulating the market to pay producers less and to charge grocers and consumers more.

"The packers have perfected manipulation," Bullard said.

With only four major packers controlling three quarters of the U.S. lamb market, ranchers get half the price for their lambs as last year while consumers are paying 10 times or more for their lamb chops - if they can find lamb chops to buy.

"You are the first livestock industry to be outsourced," he told the sheep ranchers.

Jack Orwick of Newell and South Dakota Sheepgrowers said his organization sent a letter to federal authorities in September. The group has asked for a federal investigation into what the organization sees as obvious market manipulation. Only four packers process roughly 75 percent consumer lamb for America's grocery stores.

Producers get about 18 cents a pound; prices in grocery stores run $18 to $20 per pound - a huge and increasing spread.

rapidcityjournal.com... -9d13-0f26ed7d3598.html

well there is a good reason to support the local farmer- price

in general about lamb:
lamb has less fat then other red meats (which is why it is supposed to be heart healthy ) and ontario lamb has more protien and less fat then the New Zealand lamb
I add some suet when making gravey from scratch

you have to wonder about these international consortiums

Originally posted by Danbones
re the government offer:
was it 18 cents a pound?
that would suck
they sell the stuff for 18 to 20 bucks a lb - see below

I hear you. The sad truth is market value, unless the market is high is horrible. But it's better then nothing.

It's a shame they can't come up with another way of dealing with the problem. You would think after so many years, someone would have developed testing that didn't involve the killing of livestock.

And just to put it in a bit of perspective, I have livestock, I just hope this does not happen to me one day.

To Jersey Milker....
I am Montana, the shepherd you claim to know so much about. Not sure where, how or why you fabricated your version of what transpired, but it's not anywhere near what happened.

What makes you think I was offered a settlement and refused it? The CFIA does what they want..they weren't waiting for me to accept or refuse anything. They inferred to the public via news media and press releases that owners were compensated, but I was never offered any money not did I turn any down.

Which is besides the point anyway...my flock wasirreplaceable.their genetics and pedigrees dated back to the first Shropshires imported here in early 1900. The main point is that a healthy flock of rare sheep were destroyed, as was my 13 years of working to repopulate heritage Shropshires..which are nothing like modern American shropshires. There are now less that 80 heritage ewes in all of Canada.

The flock ALL tested negative in a live test the CFIA themselves performed—a rectal biopsy with 88% accuracy. The dead test on the obex brain tissue is not even 100% accuracy...so the thing to do would be to redo the LIVE TEST several times to increase the accuracy levels above 88% (which is already very high). Not kill them all! Why don't you mention that litlte detail? Or that I never had a single sign nor symptom in 13 years—the entire time I had my flock?

I will not even begine to refute the rest of your comments because every single point is flawed and inaccurate, which is a polite way to say it's all nonsense. Where did you get all this nonsense?

It wasn't a lamb that was found to have scrapie in Alberta, and scientists and CFIA vets agree that that sheep could have acquired the disease AFTER it left my farm. Do your homework. Do your research my friend, before you jump in and make up stories...based on what exactly? More info is onShropshireSheep.org...... read ALL the info if you are interested in understanding what really happened.

There was never any scrapie in my flock or on my farm, and I WAS cooperating with CFIA to help determine /rule out my flock as a potential source of infection of the contaminated Alberta farm. Many more cases were found in that flock in Alberta, but they were not publicized.

I suggested a 9 point risk free proposal that would have enabled CFIA to monitor my flock and keep them in quarantine here safe and sound on my farm ( and you claim my flock was a health risk and threat to other flocks?? Ridiculous fear mongering!) I tried to help find out the real facts and work with them. The CFIA's knee jerk reaction was uncalled for. "Play fair with the government? " You are hilarious...Have a good day—hope you feel safe in the hands of government protecting you in your little bubble.

Originally posted by Jerseymilker
The story in short form is this:
Montana the woman with the sheep was offered a settlement on the sheep. She would have been given cash based on market value for the sheep that the CFIA were going to take. Montana refused.

The only way to test the sheep at this point and time, is to kill the sheep. Only then would they know if those sheep were infected or not. One of Montana's sheep a lamb or a 1 to 2 year old I believe, was sent out to Alberta. That lamb was infected. The lamb was reported to the authorities, as is regulation, like it or not.

The CFIA stepped in and put a quarantine on the sheep. Montana instead of reaching a deal with the CFIA decided to bring the issue to the public. The CFIA deal was taken off the table.

Then the Farmers Peace Corp stepped in, ran by Micheal Schmidt out of Ontario. The same guy who is fighting the government re raw milk charges. He and Montana and a few others cooked up an idea to steal the sheep, who at the time were government property, on the night or the night before the Government were to come and get/kill the sheep.

The Government looked for months for those sheep, and when they were found they brought charges against Montana and Micheal and all the others that helped.

You want to steal Government property then tough, pay the price and don't whine!

Yes it's sucks the only way to tell if sheep are infected is to kill them. Had Montana played fair with the Government she would have lost a lot less sheep.

Had the sheep been infected, this story could have had a lot worse ending. Not only for Montana but for all the sheep and goats they were around. Other farmers need to be protected as well.

When disease is involved in livestock we don't have to like it but sometimes the animals must die in order to save the many. This was not about rare sheep, it was about livestock safety,

The Government spent a lot of money trying to find those sheep, I hope the lot of them end up in Jail! That was tax payer money spent, not very cool. They have been brought up on criminal charges and over $100,000 in fines have been laid against them.

Make no mistake I am not pro Government, but I don't like what Montana and Micheal did. They did this to themselves.

reply to post by Wholearth


Hi Montana,

What happened to you and your sheep is just awful

I hope people are affected enough to fight the continuance of this travesty.

Welcome to ATS ((hug))

Originally posted by anton74

Originally posted by maryhinge
reply to post by jude11

 

BUMP Snf

How long before this starts happening here (UK)

:CHEERS:

APPLAUSE ME THINKS

It already has, this is more or less Mad Cow Disease in sheep. I'm going to guess that you also forgot about "Hoof and Mouth" disease in which 7,000,000+ cows and sheep were culled in the 2001 outbreak.

NO i never forgot ,what i meant was culling animals with scrapie which is not transferable/infectious to humans(i think but may be wrong)

EDIT:found this

Death of man, 53, in Oregon from apparent Scrapie-CJD In the April 8, 1994 Portland Oregonian , reporter Margie Boule described the case of Elie Faure, a 53 year old Oregon man who died in 1989 of diagnosed Creutzfeld-Jacob Syndrome later confirmed at autopsy. U.S. authorities had claimed that no one under the age of 60 had died of CJD and that mad cow disease was absent from this country. Faure did not eat beef but frequently ate lamb. Scrapie has been present in Willamette Valley sheep flocks; recently, an entire flock of 140 animals was voluntarily destroyed by its owner. Fauve's widow was familiar with CJD because the mother of a man in her office had also died from it.

SO i was WRONG

i do remember the mountains of unaffected cattle being burned very SAD indeed

this is from the actual person they joind ats see above wholearth

The flock ALL tested negative in a live test the CFIA themselves performed—a rectal biopsy with 88% accuracy. The dead test on the obex brain tissue is not even 100% accuracy...so the thing to do would be to redo the LIVE TEST several times to increase the accuracy levels above 88% (which is already very high). Not kill them all! Why don't you mention that litlte detail? Or that I never had a single sign nor symptom in 13 years—the entire time I had my flock?

Originally posted by Wholearth
To Jersey Milker....
I am Montana, the shepherd you claim to know so much about. Not sure where, how or why you fabricated your version of what transpired, but it's not anywhere near what happened.

What makes you think I was offered a settlement and refused it? The CFIA does what they want..they weren't waiting for me to accept or refuse anything. They inferred to the public via news media and press releases that owners were compensated, but I was never offered any money not did I turn any down.

Which is besides the point anyway...my flock wasirreplaceable.their genetics and pedigrees dated back to the first Shropshires imported here in early 1900. The main point is that a healthy flock of rare sheep were destroyed, as was my 13 years of working to repopulate heritage Shropshires..which are nothing like modern American shropshires. There are now less that 80 heritage ewes in all of Canada.

The flock ALL tested negative in a live test the CFIA themselves performed—a rectal biopsy with 88% accuracy. The dead test on the obex brain tissue is not even 100% accuracy...so the thing to do would be to redo the LIVE TEST several times to increase the accuracy levels above 88% (which is already very high). Not kill them all! Why don't you mention that litlte detail? Or that I never had a single sign nor symptom in 13 years—the entire time I had my flock?

I will not even begine to refute the rest of your comments because every single point is flawed and inaccurate, which is a polite way to say it's all nonsense. Where did you get all this nonsense?

It wasn't a lamb that was found to have scrapie in Alberta, and scientists and CFIA vets agree that that sheep could have acquired the disease AFTER it left my farm. Do your homework. Do your research my friend, before you jump in and make up stories...based on what exactly? More info is onShropshireSheep.org...... read ALL the info if you are interested in understanding what really happened.

There was never any scrapie in my flock or on my farm, and I WAS cooperating with CFIA to help determine /rule out my flock as a potential source of infection of the contaminated Alberta farm. Many more cases were found in that flock in Alberta, but they were not publicized.

I suggested a 9 point risk free proposal that would have enabled CFIA to monitor my flock and keep them in quarantine here safe and sound on my farm ( and you claim my flock was a health risk and threat to other flocks?? Ridiculous fear mongering!) I tried to help find out the real facts and work with them. The CFIA's knee jerk reaction was uncalled for. "Play fair with the government? " You are hilarious...Have a good day—hope you feel safe in the hands of government protecting you in your little bubble.

Wow. Thanks for your presence and finding your way here.

I could only imagine what you're going through, and that is only after disconnecting myself from the "civilized" and "real" world. I don't know how I would react to armed thugs entering my property, killing my "family" and telling me I must obey and comply because it's their (thoughtless, monkey) job.

Please continue your vigilance and keep this thread updated, there is a very large impact you *could* make on this forum as it is indexed well by google and has a much larger readership compared to the minority of people that post and say something out loud, as usual. You can see the same behavior in public schools and many other places

reply to post by jude11


We see this more and more. Drink and share raw milk with your neighbors? Criminal. Run afoul of some abscure EPA regulation? Criminal

I don't necessarily agree that this is some corporate anti-competition issue...most corporations wouldn't even know she existed much less care enough to mess with her. The real an more insidious issue is the big government, control freak, statists. From bans on how much soda you may drink to telling you what type of milk you may drink to regulating and criminalizing anything under the sun. The nanny-statists who would force you to comply to their will under the force of guns "for your own good."

REminds me of this C.S. Lewis quote:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Where does this all end?

At the back of a line waiting for government bread from a government approved and apportioned
provider...

Then start all over again at the back of another line....waiting for cheese.

Off topic I think the ATS motto should be rethought...

How about "Deny Ignorance and Educate the Masses"