A Cork farmer was jailed for five years by Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday for conspiring to defraud the Department of Agriculture of £75,000 by deliberately placing a BSE-infected cow in his herd so that the whole herd would be destroyed and he would be recompensed.
He is James Sutton, aged 49, of Kilgarriffe House, Kilgarriffe, Co Cork.
Judge A.G. Murphy said that if it had gone undetected, it could have eroded the confidence of foreign consumers in Irish meat exports, he said.
"This was an enormous crime and one that does not relate merely to the trying to defraud the Irish people of £75,000," the judge said. It could have affected the livelihoods of everyone in Ireland.
He praised Department of Agriculture officials and gardai for their vigilance. The fraud was uncovered in an operation by the Department's special investigations unit and the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, backed up by local gardai in west Cork.
A father of five, Sutton had pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to defraud the Minister for Agriculture between August 1st and October 31st, 1996, by buying a BSE-infected animal and tagging it with an identification tag from an animal born in his herd, with the intention of having all the cattle on his lands destroyed and obtaining depopulation compensation from the Minister for Agriculture.
Department officials noticed the cow had no horns, while its identification papers stated that it had a full set of horns when examined a year before, and there was no evidence of its having been dehorned in the interim.
The officials became even more suspicious when they found a fresh piece of animal flesh in the cow's identification tag.
Mr Kevin Cross SC, for Sutton, said his client was under severe financial pressure at the time and owed over £700,000 to financial institutions after borrowing heavily for machinery and equipment for his farm.
He had attempted the fraud in an effort to get money to pay off financial institutions, but he had ruined himself in the process.
"Mr Sutton has also suffered a natural and proper ostracisation in his local community," said Mr Cross. He added that Sutton's marriage had broken up as a result of the case.
He pointed out that Sutton had pleaded guilty early, after some legal argument in the trial, and had co-operated fully. He had accompanied gardai around the country and, acting in "a Sherlock Holmes manner", had pointed out people to them.
Mr Cross asked Judge Murphy to be as lenient as possible given Sutton's previous good character and not to jail him, but Judge Murphy said it was such a serious case he felt it had to be dealt with by way of a custodial sentence.
He said that, taking all factors into account, he believed five years was an appropriate sentence but agreed to review it in a year's time, although he was making no promise as regards suspending the balance then.