If you aren't familiar with what this case is all about there follows a brief history.

On a Tuesday morning, March 18th 2003, Magical Farms were confronted with tragedy. In the early hours of the morning they found 12 of their male alpacas dead with no apparent outward signs of trauma or obvious cause of death.
Many others were extremely lethargic, refusing to eat, drink, or stand, and displaying some shaking primarily in their front legs and their heads.
The problem was linked directly to a batch of feed mixed by Land O' Lakes that was heavily tainted with a substance poisonous to alpacas.
This somehow slipped through their quality control measures, and the tainted alpaca feed was distributed widely across northern Ohio. Many farms were affected.
The total number of alpacas killed at Magical Farms due to this poisonous feed is now over 100, with over an additional 250 alpacas affected.

The case has now gone to Federal Court on Monday the jury will be be given their instructions by the judge and sent to reach a verdict.

Whatever the jury decide in this case we all need to ask the question;
What will be the impact on the alpaca industry as a whole?

What I am wondering is how will other producers of alpaca feed stuff respond to this case and the verdict?

In business it is prudent to have product liability insurance and to do something called risk assessment. Which is basically asking the question What if? and then calculating the consequences whether they be financial, environmental or human.

The what if question here is clearly; What if we mix the alpaca feed badly and accidentally poison 300 alpacas? What will that costs to us? In compensation and in damage to our brand name?

Having made the assessment as an alpaca feed producer you have some choices:

You can implement further safeguards and checks while mixing the alpaca feed or institute post mix testing of the alpaca feed. Now all this will obviously add to the costs of production so its only fair the price of the alpaca feed should be increased.

Once you tell your insurers about the risk assessment they may well increase the premiums, even though you have put in place additional safeguards to prevent the alpaca feed becoming contaminated. Yet more costs to be passed on to the buyer of the alpaca feed.



As an alpaca feed producer you may even decide that the risks do not justify the rewards and so you stop manufacturing alpaca feed altogether.

Of course this then makes the nations alpaca breeders dependent on an even smaller pool of alpaca feed suppliers and now their risk has just increased because they have more customers with yet more expensive alpacas.

I don't know what the answer will be. Maybe some alpaca feed producers will ask us to sign a legal waiver, limiting the amount of damages we can claim should an accident happen.

There are a number of people interested in the outcome of this trial other than those who were in Federal Court for the last two weeks. The alpaca feed stuff suppliers and their insurers, the alpaca insurers such as Wilkins and of course the alpaca farmers of North America.

Well lets hope its all just a storm in a tea cup........

Adrian Stewart click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

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