Gozo shepherd loses appeal against €5,000 fine, but court refuses to order herd’s destruction

Farmer Ganni Attard had been the subject of a number of court cases after the authorities raided his farm in 2012 to cull a number of unregistered animals

Authorities raided the farm of Ganni Attard [pictured] in 2012
Authorities raided the farm of Ganni Attard [pictured] in 2012

The Court of Appeal has dismissed both an appeal against a decision to fine a Gozitan sheep farmer for keeping an unregistered herd and a second appeal, filed by the authorities requesting the destruction of the herd.

Farmer Ganni Attard of Gharb had been the subject of a number of court cases after the authorities raided his farm in 2012 to cull a number of unregistered animals, citing public health concerns.

Attard resisted the cull and insisted that he had been telling the authorities since July 2010 to register the sheep and tag them.

Last July, Magistrate Joe Mifsud, presiding the Court of Magistrates in Gozo found him guilty of illegally keeping the animals in breach of a number of local and EU laws and fined him €5,000, payable over three years, but did not order the destruction of the herd.

Attard filed an appeal, asking the court to revoke the sentence and declare him not guilty of all charges.

The Attorney General had also appealed the sentence, asking the court to also order the confiscation of the man’s entire herd from his farm in San Dimitri, limits of Gharb.

In a decision handed down last week, Judge Giovanni Grixti, presiding the Court of Appeal dismissed Attard’s first argument – that the prosecution had failed to prove the existence of the animals in question – pointing out that he had admitted to encountering obstacles to the herd’s registration and also because there was photographic evidence. The charge that Attard had failed to register animals did not also require that he register their movements to be valid, said the court in response to his other arguments. “In other words, a person can commit a breach of only one of the hypotheses listed...and not necessarily every one of them for guilt to be found.”

“The article...is clear and imposes upon every person, whether owner or keeper etc, the duty of identifying and registering animals they are responsible for as well as declaring their movements if this is the case. Every stretching of the simple meaning of these words or of what they should not mean is undesired for the purposes of the charge in question.”

The judge dismissed Attard’s appeal, but the Attorney General did not find a sympathetic ear in the court, either.

With respect to the Attorney General’s cross-appeal, in which he asked the court to order the destruction of the herd, the court held that the law specified the confiscation of the “instruments, equipment, products or substances used in the commission of the crime”, and this was at the absolute discretion of the court.

But the court also noted that “the sheep are neither instruments, nor equipment, nor products nor substances, but animals... the court of first instance therefore did not have the legal power to order the confiscation of the animals and the arguments of the Attorney General, even if logical and aimed at safeguarding public health, cannot be considered further.”

The cross-appeal was also dismissed.