A farmer has lost a case to save his flock of sheep from being culled after he failed to comply with a legal requirement to register them.

The decision was handed down yesterday by an Appeals Court which upheld a previous ruling delivered by a magistrate in July 2014, paving the way for the 200 animals to be culled.

The magistrate had ruled that a previous culling of about the same number of the farmers’ sheep, carried out in 2012, was justified on the grounds of safeguarding public health.

The decision by the veterinary authorities was lawful because failing to register the animals triggered an automatic suspicion that they were ill, the magistrate had ruled.

The 24-hour police surveillance has so far cost taxpayers more than €600,000

The Appeals Court, presided over by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, Judge Giannino Caruana Demajo and Judge Noel Cuschieri, agreed that the lack of proper traceability of food-producing animals meant that the Director of Veterinary Services had reasonable cause for suspicion and therefore acted lawfully when he had ordered the culling.

The case dates back to November 2012, when farmer Gianni Attard took court action against the Department of Veterinary Services in an attempt to stop it from slaughtering more of his sheep after the first culling took place.

This had happened while he was under arrest at the Victoria police station in connection with the registration issue.

Mr Attard then took the issue to court, arguing that the culled sheep, which were estimated to cost in the region of €520,000, had been tested and none of them were found to be sick.

Meanwhile, pending the court action, the rest of the herd were confined to his farm in Għarb where two police officers were stationed to ensure none of the animals would be removed and that their produce would not be sold. The 24-hour police surveillance has so far cost taxpayers more than €600,000.

Mr Attard had insisted in court that he had been telling the authorities since July 2010 to register the sheep and tag them.

But the appeals court ruled that Mr Attard had shirked his responsibility to register the sheep and that he had done nothing to get them registered for two whole years.

It also threw out his complaint that he had not been given the opportunity to prove the sheep were not sick before the first batch was culled. The court said he should have done this before.

The judges said the law laid down that, for traceability purposes, all livestock, irrespective of age, had to be tagged before being transferred from one farm to another.

Furthermore, a farmer had to keep a register of the number of sheep owned, updated with births and deaths.

Any unregistered animal was automatically presumed to be sick because its origins could not be traced. This constituted a public health hazard, the court ruled.

The court also noted that Mr Attard was not a registered farmer, his sheep were not registered and the premises on which the animals were held were not covered by the necessary permits.

Sources close to Mr Attard’s legal team said they were evaluating their options on the next move, which include taking the case to the Constitutional Court.