Correction Services Canada began to dismantle its prison farm system last week when it sold the 112-head Holstein herd from a farm in New Brunswick.On June 17, an auction house in Truro, N.S., sold the herd individually, ending a prison dairy operation at Dorchester Penitentiary’s Westmorland Institution near Moncton that is more than a century old. CSC officials contacting auction houses initially hoped to sell the herd, renowned for its genetics, as a package that could move to a dairy farm intact.”Instead, they were sold as hamburger,” a disgruntled Save Our Prison Farms activist said June 21.Meanwhile in Kingston, Ont., activists have organized a Community on Watch Stations movement to monitor the Frontenac Institution prison farm to watch for any attempts to move its dairy herd off the premises.”There are hundreds of Kingstonians of all ages and political stripes who are on call through a phone tree to blockade attempts to sneak the animals out,” said a COWS alert last week.The two herds at Kingston-area prison farms are expected to be sold before the end of June.The Conservatives decided last year that the 130-year-old farm system will be dismantled because it loses money and inmates who work on the farms learn few skills that can be applied in a modern economy.Opponents, made up of an eclectic coalition of former inmates, prison guards, former directors of the CSC, farm groups and social activist groups, have argued that the farms provide rehabilitation for inmates, teach work skills and provide food for the institutions and local businesses.They accuse the Conservatives of wanting the farmland so they can build bigger prisons.By March 31, 2011, farms in New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are to be closed.The Opposition majority on the House of Commons public safety committee has called for a moratorium on the closures.
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