Suzanne Atkinson,
a reporter for Ontario Farmer publications, has pleaded guilty to
charges related to the removal of 31 sheep under Canadian Food Inspection
Agency quarantine.
She will be sentenced Jan. 31.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Atkinson was part
of a group led by Michael Schmidt, who is famous for defying regulations
against the marketing of raw milk.
They planned to take the quarantined sheep from the farm of
Montana Jones on March 31, 2012, and Atkinson offered to temporarily house them at her
dairy farm.
The next day Schmidt rented a U-Haul and the sheep were
moved somewhere else and subsequently moved a number of times to different
places.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says it has so far only
been able to identify two places where they were moved.
That means there are a lot of livestock potentially at risk of becoming infected.
During their inspection, they found sheep buried on the
Schmidt farm and they found a crate containing dead sheep in a roadside ditch
near Erin.
It’s presumed that the sheep died of scrapie, a disease that
the federal government has been trying to eradicate since 2005.
Jones farm became a target for CFIA inspections in January,
2010, when Shropshires she sold to an Alberta farmer tested positive for
scrapie.
She was under immediate orders to not move any sheep, their
manure or bedding from her farm. She could move other animals and materials.
The following June 11 the CFIA stepped up its control
measures, placing the Jones farm under quarantine, meaning nothing could be
moved off the farm.
Atkinson began reporting on the issue in December, 2011,
then attended a meeting of Practical Farmers of Ontario March 31 where she
talked to Schmidt about the Jones farm quarantine.
That was about a week after the CFIA ordered Jones to
slaughter 41 of her flock of 83 Shropshires.
Four days later, when CFIA inspectors visited the Jones farm,
they found some dead of scrapie and euthanized some others – a total of 10
sheep.
Right after the meeting of Practical Farmers of Ontario,
where Schmidt was a feature speaker, the group used two pickup trucks to move
the Jones sheep to Atkinson’s farm.
Schmidt told the group to keep Jones out of the plans.
On April 1, Jones reported her sheep had been stolen.
The group spray-painted the Jones barn, saying the sheep had
been taken into “protective custody” pending the outcome of tests for scrapie.
Throughout the drama as the CFIA searched for the sheep,
Atkinson reported for Ontario Farmer. Her editor and publisher, Paul Mahon,
knew nothing about her involvement in the conspiracy.
Scrapie is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy disease
that slowly attacks the sheep’s brain, ultimately resulting in death. It can
take years between infection and death and is difficult to definitively
identify scrapie until the brain of the dead animal can be examined.
It is in a family of similar diseases, including the
sensational mad cow’s disease (Bovine Spongiform Encepthalopathy), chronic
wasting disease of elk and deer and Kreutzfedt-Jakob disease of humans.
There is no proof that scrapie or BSE cause Kreutzfeld-Jakob
disease, but many precautions have been implemented to ensure people do not
consume brain or central nervous system portions of cattle, sheep, elk and deer
that might be carrying the diseases.
What Atkinson did was not only a violation of key provisions to prevent the spread of disease in Canada's livestock industry, but also an egregious violation of journalistic standards.
