Not everyone is who they say they are.


The Windsor Star (CAN)
Fake food inspector visits Kingsville dairy farm
By Dalson Chen,
March 2, 2009
http://www.windsorstar.com/Health/Fake+food+inspector+visits+Kingsville+dairy+farm/1345434/story.html

A Kingsville-area dairy farmer is wondering why a man posing as a food
inspector paid him a visit.

“Who is he?” said Mark, who didn’t want his last name published. “Is
he with an animal rights organization? Is he just a guy who’s got a
vendetta against farmers? We don’t know. That’s the scary part for
farmers.”

On Monday, Essex County OPP issued a warning to farmers about a
suspicious male pretending to be a representative of the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency.

Mark said the clean-cut man arrived at his farm on County Road 23
around 1 p.m. on Feb. 17.

The man gave his name as Chris Sinclair of the CFIA. He carried a
clipboard. He asked to see where Mark mixed and stored his feed. “I
believed he was who he said he was,” Mark said.

When the man finished looking at Mark’s feed mixture, he inspected
cleaning agents for the milking system. After about 25 minutes on the
farm, the “inspector” declared everything in order, got back into his
truck and left.

It wasn’t until a day later that Mark began to suspect something was
wrong. He said his first clue was that no other dairy farmer in the
area was visited by the inspector.

Then Mark started thinking about the fact that Chris Sinclair never
provided any identification.

Mark said he talked to the Essex County Federation of Agriculture and
then the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. He learned there is no CFIA
employee by the name Chris Sinclair.

Mark also learned CFIA officials are required to present photo
identification when they visit farms and they always leave the owner
with paperwork. “This guy didn’t do any of that,” Mark said.

Now Mark said he’s worried about the stranger’s motives. “It’s a real
bothersome thing. Is he casing the joint to steal something? I don’t
know.”

Mark said his dairy farm has been in his family since the 1800s. It is
home to about 80 milk cows and 100 stock cows.

Asked why he mentioned animal rights, Mark recalled a 1997 incident at
a mink farm in Blenheim where activists broke in and set free 1,500
mink. “When you have livestock, your mind goes that way. You start
thinking about, ‘Do they want to come in and let the animals out of
the barns?’”

Mark said the Essex County farming community has been talking. “Most
of the dairy guys and livestock guys in the county right now are all
kind of wondering: What was he doing? Has he been anywhere else?”

The pretender is described as a white male who looks between 40 and 45
years old. He’s about five foot five with brown hair and blue eyes. At
the time he visited Mark, he was clean shaven and dressed neatly. He
wore a green bomber-style jacket and work boots and drove a white Ford
F-150 pickup truck.

Anyone with information about this suspicious man is asked to call
Kingsville OPP at 519-733-2345, the Essex County OPP street crime unit
at 519-723-2491 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.


© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star