Posted: May 3rd, 2012 - 3:03pm
Source: QMI Agency

HASTINGS — The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has removed nine Shropshire sheep from Montana Jones’ Wholearth Farm near Hastings.
Four CFIA agents and two security guards arrived at the farm about 7:15 p.m. Friday with an order for the destruction of nine Shropshire sheep that remained on the farm after 31 sheep went missing earlier this month.
They left two vehicles guarding the premises overnight and Saturday morning CFIA veterinarians returned at about 8 a.m. to load up the sheep and take them away for immediate slaughter, said Jones’ lawyer, Karen Selick, of the Belleville-based Canadian Constitution Foundation.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said this week it has confirmed the presence of scrapie in Jones’s flock.
“The disease was confirmed in a sheep that recently died on the farm,” said a media release from media relations officer Lisa Gauthier.
But Selick said Jones is disputing the CFIA’s findings. Jones said the CFIA vet examined the sheep the day before it died and told her the animal didn’t have any of the symptoms of scrapie. Its eyes looked normal, it had a normal gait and no tremors, the vet said, suggesting pregnancy toxaemia as a possible cause of illness. “Montana thinks perhaps it had an impacted rumen, as it had been vomiting and not eating for a few days,” Selick said.
Jones retained a tissue sample from the dead sheep before it left her farm, and asked the CFIA vet to provide a tissue sample from the animal that tested positive for scrapie. Selick said she wants to have both samples tested independently to compare the DNA so she can be satisfied that the animal that was tested is the same one that left her farm. But the CFIA vet refused to provide a tissue sample so that the DNA comparison could proceed, Selick said.
“She has also asked repeatedly that the CFIA provide her with portions of the exact brain and lymph tissue that was tested so that she can have independent lab testing done for scrapie. The CFIA has consistently refused this.”