AR-News: (CA) Park may have contained human remains (Reuters, via CNN)

[Barry Kent MacKay]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) -- Pork products processed and
distributed from the farm of accused Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton
may have contained human remains, police and health officials said
Wednesday.

Pickton raised and slaughtered pigs at the Port Coquitlam farm as a
part-time occupation until his arrest at the property in February 2002, and
police believe he gave or sold processed meat products to friends and
acquaintances.

Pickton, 53, is awaiting trial in the killings of at least 22 of more than
60 missing Vancouver prostitutes who disappeared over the past decade and
are feared to have been murdered at the dilapidated farm 20 miles east of
Vancouver.

"Given the state of the farm, and what we know about the investigation, we
cannot rule out the possibility that cross-contamination may have occurred,"
B.C. provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall told reporters in Victoria.
"Cross-contamination could mean that human remains did get into or
contaminate some of the pork meat," Kendall said.

Officials stressed that the farm's pig slaughtering operation was not
officially licensed and he did not sell processed meat to retail outlets.
"There is no evidence we are dealing with anything other than a very
specific localized issue, with a specific number of local people," said Cpl.
Catherine Galliford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Kendall said he was not contacted by the police until last month when they
asked a "hypothetical question' about the potential health risk. He issued
the alert when they later said it probably happened.

Details of evidence from the farm were presented in court last year at
Pickton's preliminary hearing, but a court order prohibits reporters who
covered the hearing from publishing details of what they heard until it is
used in his trial, which will likely not start until next year.

Police defended the timing of their contacting health officials, saying it
was needed to protect the investigation, although they also acknowledged
more people may have received meat from Pickton than they had orginally
thought.

"We have carefully considered all the issues," said Vancouver Police
Detective Shelia Sullivan.

Pickton is officially charged with 15 murders but prosecutors have said
seven more counts are waiting to be filed. Tests have identified the DNA of
nine more women, but not yet resulted in charges.

The victims were among more than 60 drug-addicted prostitutes who
disappeared from Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside neighborhood. Families
of the missing women expressed horror at the news, with one telling a
Vancouver radio station bluntly. "I'm not eating dinner tonight."
Pickton, in custody since his arrest, is the only person charged in the
case. He has not entered a plea to the criminal charges but denied
wrongdoing in a related civil lawsuit.


__________________________

Barry Kent MacKay
Canadian Office
Animal Protection Institute 
www.api4animals.org