THE EARLY YEARS OF TEXELS IN CANADA
Authors Gordon and Reta Young- Thorndale, Ontario, Canada.
- We contacted Danish Agriculture immediately when we got the first news. They were emphatic that there
was no disease issue but we were caught in a political mess. They advised us to get help from anyone
who had political clout in Ottawa. The British Lab wondered what kind of game Ottawa was playing; they
urged us to take court action. In a 3 week period we pleaded with many government officials, but no help
was offered. Ralph Ferguson, a former federal Minster of Agriculture tried many approaches to help us
but was stone walled everywhere.
He advised us that there was no way to reverse the decision including
court action. An Ottawa law firm advised us that we had a "compelling case" but they said we couldn't
expect to get any financial award and it would cost us at $75,000 to fight the case because we had several
European witnesses. I did get John Wise the then Minister of Agriculture to write us a letter stating
what happened and to identify by number each animal involved. Our last offer to Ottawa was to allow a
senior faculty member from St. Hyacinthe Vet University to draw blood on all 18 animals and he was to
ship this blood to Allebix Corp. in Toronto. They would perform blot tests on the blood and would be
able to give accurate results. We also stated we would not use the results in any manner to incriminate
or embarrass Ottawa. We stated we would have a legal document drawn up to protect them. This process was
to be done at our expense. This caused an explosion and I was informed I had 10 days to get the 9 sheep out
of Mirabel and furthermore I was banned for life from ever receiving a permit to import livestock. When we
took the sheep from Mirabel we noted there was no evidence of blood being drawn from them and all 18 sheep
were in one large pen, the same pen from their arrival. We were not only financially bankrupt at this time
but we had very little interest in continuing the project. We did flush the ewes once or twice. We sold offspring,
semen and the ewes we had assembled for recipients. From the 14 embryos we had 8 lambs and one still birth.
I felt responsible in great part for the failure; we knew there was risk with breeding in Sept.
