We’re Mike and Sue Swallow. We were instrumental in stopping the USDA from cruelly killing pet birds in Southern California last year during an outbreak of Exotic Newcastle Disease.

Two nights ago we got a call from Jennifer Cichanovich and Chris Cronner from Matsqui Blue Farms. They run an organic blueberry farm in Matsqui on 17 acres. They also have about 40 chickens. As Chris told us, “They aren’t just workers, they’re my friends”.

The problem is that they are about a mile away from a broiler breeder ranch. Now the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is threatening to take away their organic growers certification if they don’t let them kill all their birds. Today investigators from the CFIA threatened them with having to pay to have an inch of topsoil removed from their farm as well as having to pay for the labor to disinfect their property. They did all of this without showing or giving them anything in writing. They have already tested their birds and the results were negative.

This is exactly what the United States Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture did here in California during the recent END outbreak. At the end of a year of wholesale slaughter of everything with a feather, Jack Shere, the Co-Commander of the joint USDA-CDFA END Task Force, told us that they learned a lot and if it happened again they would do things a whole lot differently.

They learned that viruses don’t jump fences. They learned that drawing a circle around the infected premise and killing everything in it only worked a hundred years ago. People have automobiles these days and the old analogy of a “firebreak” doesn’t work when the fire is jumping all around you. They learned that viruses do not float around in the air for longer then thirty seconds and direct sunlight kills a virus in even less then that. They learned that the only way to contain the virus is to strictly quarantine birds. The most important lesson they learned was that backyard pets do not pose a significant threat of disease. Backyard pets are better taken care of and aren’t kept inches from each other from birth to death.

The reason we’re writing you is we aren’t familiar with your laws. Here in the USA we have the Fourth Amendment which protects citizens from illegal search and seizure. We don’t know if Canadians are protected similarly. If you know of anybody that Matsqui Farms or we can call for help, please don’t hesitate to call us or Matsqui Farms. Their number is (604) 859-8918.

Please don’t let what happened here, happen there. We’ve experienced first hand the heartbreak and devastation that happens when government agencies run amock.

Mike and Sue Swallow
Norco, CA
(909) 520-1910