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THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
Ashburton District Court news
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Pet food couple avoid jail A former Mid Canterbury stock agent and his wife have been sentenced to community detention and community work for running a pet food business that “traded in animal suffering”. A veterinarian who examined emaciated sheep that came from their property said they were the worst she had seen. Callum John Dunnett, 37, and Deborah Jayne Dunnett, 43, appeared for sentence in the Ashburton District Court yesterday after admitting a total of eight charges of wilfully ill-treating sheep and transporting them in an unfit state for slaughter. Judge Joanna Maze said the
charges were serious and aggravated by the fact Callum Dunnett was an experienced stock agent. She sentenced him to six months’ community detention at his suburban Rolleston property, with a 10pm to 5am curfew, and 100 hours’ community work. Deborah Dunnett was sentenced to three months’ community detention and 100 hours community work. The Ministry for Primary Industries had asked for a jail term, saying the pet food operation at the Dunnetts’ Ashburton farmlet was a commercial operation that relied on high turnover of end-ofline sheep and no veterinary bills
to make a profit. Sheep that were not euthanised when they came to the property were held for around seven days on a bare paddock before being transported for slaughter. The couple have since sold the property and moved to an urban location. In June last year a truck driver took 105 ewes to the Smithfield meatworks in Timaru where a veterinarian found nearly half were emaciated and just 2 per cent fit enough to have been transported. One sheep fell down in front of her and died. She said the sheep were the worst she had seen. That
led MPI officials to inspect the Dunnetts’ property, where more emaciated and ill animals were found. “The summary of facts alleges there was little or no regard for animal welfare in this exercise,” Judge Maze told the defendants as they stood in the dock. “You saw yourselves as providing a service for other farmers without consideration of the state of the animals before bringing them to your property.” She said the Dunnetts were providing ample pasture for their stud sheep, but none for the endof-line animals that arrived and would spend on average seven
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days before being transported out again. MPI said the operation was commercial exploitation in an area that Callum Dunnett had significant expertise. Defence counsel Bevan Coombes said the Dunnetts accepted the seriousness of the offending and took responsibility for what happened. Judge Maze said Callum Dunnett had lost his job and his reputation because of the offending but the sentence needed to send a clear message to others that animal welfare mattered in a country that depended on high quality farming.
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