A former Saskatchewan livestock company has been fined $172,023 for shipping cattle to the United States without testing for bovine tuberculosis.
A lawyer for Frank Eaton Livestock Ltd., which is no longer in business, entered a guilty plea on behalf of the company in a Regina courtroom March 30.
Federal prosecutor Frank Impey said the charges and plea resulted from a Canadian Food Inspection Agency investigation after a heifer became ill in the United States in February 2003.
The heifer, which did not have TB, was traced to Manitoba. The investigation found the exporting company had incorrectly identified Manitoba heifers as being from Alberta or Saskatchewan on 141 health certificates between August 2002 and February 2003.
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American regulations at the time required all Manitoba breeding cattle to be tested for bovine tuberculosis.
Impey noted this was the second set of charges and guilty pleas involving a Saskatchewan company under similar circumstances. Prairie Livestock Ltd. of Moosomin, Sask., pleaded guilty in December 2005 on two charges of exporting cattle without meeting American livestock import health regulations.
Those fines totalled $71,000.
“They had 58 shipments,” Impey said. “At least one Manitoba heifer in one of the shipments was not identified.”
The cattle in the second set of charges moved through the North Portal border in southeastern Saskatchewan.
During its investigation, CFIA found that 4,722 of the 16,807 cattle shipped in the 141 loads were Manitoba-born heifers that hadn’t been tested, Impey said.
The fine reflects the amount the company would have had to spend to do the tests, estimated at $101,523, plus a punishment of $500 per load.
Impey said the fine would have been higher if the cattle had had TB.
“This fine is for the danger they placed the industry in,” he said.
CFIA spokesperson Sandra Stephens said the investigation in the Prairie Livestock case began as a domestic disease issue involving rabies. Through the course of its work, the agency learned of the Manitoba animal in the U.S. that was identified as being from Saskatchewan.
Subsequent random sampling of various exports led to the case involving Frank Eaton Livestock.
“Our system works well but certainly we do rely on the integrity of everyone involved in the livestock industry,” Stephens said. “Most people do take these things seriously.”
Frank Eaton Livestock is also the target of a class-action lawsuit launched by producers against a number of companies after they weren’t paid for more than $2 million worth of cattle they sold at Arcola Livestock Sales Ltd. on Feb. 11, 2003.
