A concern among local veterinarians that the Government gave the wrong impression that it rescued 58 dogs and arranged for them to be housed abroad after Hurricane Melissa has been placated by Agriculture, Fisheries, and Mining Minister Floyd Green.

Additionally, he assured people who lost their dogs during the hurricane and may have thought their pets were among those sent abroad that no such thing happened.

“It was an unfortunate conflation of two separate things,” Green explained at the Jamaica Observer Press Club on December 16, 2025.

Clinical veterinarians Dr Sarah Wilkinson-Eytle and Dr Paul Cadogan had raised concern about the matter after Green told a post-Melissa special media briefing at Jamaica House on December 3 that representatives from the Veterinary Services Division in his ministry, along with members of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), had rescued marooned dogs following air reconnaissance missions in the aftermath of the hurricane which slammed into Jamaica’s south-western coast on October 28.

“The ministry facilitated the export of 58 dogs which were rescued through some of these missions…Some of them to the US, some of them to Canada,” Green said at the news briefing.

However, Drs Wilkinson-Eytle and Cadogan said the information, as provided by Green, had errors.

They said that the dogs that were sent abroad were already in a shelter in Negril before the hurricane.

The shelter, operated by Negril Pup Rescue, “started to make arrangements to have the dogs moved to the United States and Canada before the hurricane”, the veterinarians told the Sunday Observer.

“What happened was that the ministry, along with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, had to accelerate that movement post-Melissa, because the shelter sustained damage and because [of the] challenges in the west, so we wanted to get the animals out as fast as possible. All the ministry did was facilitate paperwork so that the export permits and the veterinary inspections and stuff could be done before they left,” said Dr Wilkinson-Eytle, operator of Phoenix VetCare.

She and Dr Cadogan acknowledged that Veterinary Services Division personnel went on reconnaissance flights with the JDF with the intention of determining the storm’s impact on animals.

“They were looking for farms that were damaged and what kind of damage; if there were any areas where there might have been large amounts of dead animals and things like that — that’s what they were doing. They were not looking for stray pets or lost pets or anything like that. If they did see them and had to record them, fine. They had nothing to do with the air lifting of pets,” Dr Wilkinson-Eytle said.

Added Dr Cadogan: “They just did an overview of the situation, also to kind of see what was happening with the carcasses. This had nothing to do with the dogs that were rescued going to the US. There are specific organisations that have been helping with that, one is Humane World for Animals. There is another one as well, Wings of Rescue.”

“I think it’s an unfortunate conflation of two things that happened. It gives a totally wrong impression,” Dr Wilkinson-Eytle said of Green’s comments.

Asked to respond to the concerns at the Observer Press Club, Green said he agreed with the doctors.

“How it flowed in the script it could be taken that it was the reconnaissance missions that led to the dogs being sent overseas, but that’s not the case,” he said, adding that he had reached out to the operators of Montego Bay Animal Haven, a non-profit organisation that rescues and re-homes stray animals, as they had commented on the matter after his comments were reported by the Observer.

“What I reported was the work of our Veterinary Services Division. There was a paragraph that spoke to the division doing reconnaissance missions to look for marooned animals, and then that flowed into the other line speaking about the export of the dogs,” Green said.

“We do have a number of excellent agencies, NGO [non-governmental organisation] partners, that work in the animal rights space and spend a lot of time providing homes for animals. MoBay Haven is one such, and they work with an international organisation as well and when [the shelter] suffered damage, one of the solutions was to move those animals,” he added.

“What the Veterinary Services Division does is they facilitate that movement. Another thing was that people felt that it was the Government that moved those animals, but that was not the case. Clearly, you can’t get them out without the Veterinary Services [Division] ensuring that all is well; so it’s just that [what I said] flowed into each other and gave that impression. It was unfortunate,” Green told the Observer Press Club.

WILKINSON-EYTLE…I think it’s an unfortunate conflation of two things that happened

CADOGAN…air reconnaissance missions had nothing to do with the dogs that were rescued