Desperate Ontario Farmer’s Sheep are Hunted Down by CFIA After Anonymous heroes try to hide them

It was a quiet, uneventful farm in Hastings, Ontario, more like what you’d expect from a countryside refuge than a scene of tragedy. For more than a decade, the woman who ran it, known to many as Montana Jones, quietly built up a flock of rare heritage Shropshire sheep. These weren’t ordinary commercial sheep. Their bloodlines traced back to breeding stock imported from the UK in the late 1800s. For Jones, the flock was not just livestock. It was a mission: to preserve dwindling genetic diversity, to keep alive a heritage breed that had almost vanished from Canadian pastures as industrial grain‑fed sheep took over. 

Up until 2010, Jones’s flock appeared healthy. No chronic scratching. No tremors. No bunny‑hop gait. Nothing that might signal the dreaded disease the authorities feared: Scrapie, a fatal prion disease that afflicts sheep and goats, weakens them, shortens their lives and can devastate entire flocks. 

But the peace collapsed in early 2010 when a sheep Jones had sold to a farm in Alberta years earlier reportedly died and tested positive for scrapie. That one distant case triggered a cascade of events. Suddenly Jones’s entire operation was under scrutiny. Her farm was placed under federal quarantine. Her sheep, once her hope for preservation, became suspect. 

The Canadian regulatory authority responsible, Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), began investigations. They took live biopsies of the flock in 2011. The results came back negative for scrapie. On top of that, none of the sheep exhibited any clinical signs. Jones had devoted twelve years to raising them without ever seeing symptoms. 

Still, in November 2011, CFIA informed Jones that they planned to destroy 41 of her sheep. Their reasoning wasn’t based on evidence of disease, but on genotype, the genetic susceptibility to scrapie. Among those slated for destruction were 20 pregnant ewes. Many of those marked for death were born after the sheep that tested positive had already left her farm. 

Jones and her legal representatives fought back. They proposed alternatives. Keep her farm in quarantine. Monitor the flock long term. Allow brain‑tissue testing only when sheep died naturally. Even offer to sacrifice some sheep in exchange for sparing the core breeding stock, those she considered rare and essential for preserving the breed. She argued that such measures would contain any risk of disease, while keeping alive an endangered genetic lineage. 

In her own voice she pleaded with the authorities: “This is an endangered breed. They’re due to have lambs soon so I’m expecting 30 to 40 new babies. If CFIA kills my pregnant mothers, there will be only 107 or so females left in Canada.” She added: “They could at least let the lambs be born.” 

But her appeals were rejected. The scheduled date for destruction was April 2, 2012. When morning came and CFIA agents arrived they found empty barns. The sheep were gone. Instead of the flock they expected, they found a typed note, signed by a previously unknown group calling itself the “Farmers Peace Corp,” claiming they had taken the animals “into protective custody until an alternative to killing has been found or conclusive independent proof or clear evidence of disease has been proven.” 

Shock rippled through rural Ontario. The regulators, along with the police, launched a massive search. They canvassed farms, called in aerial support, knocked on doors, desperate to track down 31 rare sheep that had vanished under quarantine. It was no longer just a disease‑investigation. It had become a manhunt. 

Weeks passed. Then, in June 2012, CFIA announced they had located some of the missing sheep on a private farm in Grey County. 

They seized them. And then they destroyed them. All of them. Brain‑tissue tests came back negative for scrapie. Every single sheep tested negative. 

The damage, however, was done. The pregnant ewes, the unborn lambs, the heritage genetics she had protected for more than a decade – gone. The rare Shropshire bloodlines she had worked to save were effectively wiped out. In public statements her lawyer noted these were “Shropshire sheep that have some relatively rare genetics.” 

Then came the criminal charges. In December 2012, CFIA laid multiple counts against four people connected to the case including Jones (legal name: Linda Frances Jones), a co‑farmer, and two others. Charges included obstructing inspectors, transporting quarantined animals, conspiracy, and defrauding public services. 

In 2014 one defendant pleaded guilty to transporting an animal under quarantine. 

Jones and another co‑accused soldiered on fighting the case. But legal proceedings dragged. Disclosure was delayed. Evidence was voluminous. Papers piled up. Years passed. Eventually, in November 2016, a judge stayed the charges, ruling that the delay violated their right to be tried within a reasonable time under the charter. 

At that moment, Jones said she felt relief but not victory. “To have this case go on… just for it to have turned into this for seven years, it’s tragic. Even though we’ve won today I don’t want to walk away from it as if it never happened.” 

Still, nothing was restored. The sheep remained dead. The rare genetics lost. The farm under quarantine. No compensation for income lost. No reparations for what many consider a tragic overreach of regulatory power. 

This story is powerful not just because a woman lost valuable animals. It matters because it lays bare a stark collision between a government’s disease‑control program and the fragile world of small‑scale heritage farming. The disease in question, scrapie, is not transmissible to humans. It is exclusively an animal health concern. 

When sheep disappear overnight. When regulators hunt them down like fugitives. When brain‑tissue tests come back negative after the animals are dead. And when all legal charges are eventually dropped, does that put things right? Or does it leave only loss and silence in its wake?

For many who followed the case, what happened to Jones and her flock revealed just how far the CFIA could operate unchecked. An example of how regulatory zeal can erase heritage, crush livelihoods, and destroy rare genetics even when there was no proof of disease, even when the living animals were healthy.

Montana Jones and her sheep were featured in a single episode of Farm Crime on CBC. The episode focuses on the crime committed when her sheep were hidden from authorities. It explores the circumstances that led to this decision and the legal consequences that followed. Viewers gain a detailed look at how this act affected Montana, her animals, and the broader regulatory context.

The full length episode can be watched below: