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Rebel News · Drea Humphrey · January 24, 2025
In case you missed it, the federal government has order the culling of some 400 ostriches, after an avian flu outbreak. It threatens to destroy a family-run ostrich farm spanning decades … all in the name of protecting public health.
Founded in 1995, Universal Ostrich Farm sells bird oil, feathers and skins to international markets. Their eggs are also shipped to a university in Japan, where scientists work to develop an H5N1 vaccine to combat avian flu pandemics.
“If we allow them to do this when we have science sitting here, and we have the ability to help mitigate the migratory risk of the avian flu and stabilize it worldwide, and if we can’t stop that here with our 400, there’s no saving anyone else’s farms,” B.C. farmer Katie Pasitney told Rebel News.
After an H5N1 outbreak on the farm last fall, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) ordered all the birds on the farm be killed, reported the Vancouver Sun. If the family cannot kill the birds themselves by February 1, 2025, the agency intends to hire a third party to carry out the cull.
“This is the opening up [of] Pandora’s box and my eyes to government [overreach],” said Pasitney, the adult daughter of the farm’s owner.
Having grown up with these birds, she describes in detail how they found themselves awaiting the death order, a measure she considers senseless and unjust. If the CFIA refuses to revise their culling order for the apparently healthy flock, it could set a dangerous precedent for farmers across Canada.
Pasitney says farmers have the right to raise their livestock how they want without government interference. “If they are allowed to do this to our 400-pound animals, you’re next.”
Agency officials recently canceled an in-person visit to the quarantine zone this month on account of a peaceful protest away from the effected animals. They followed up with a threat to involve the RCMP.
“We can’t shoot them [the ostriches]. That will cause mass panic. We can’t gas them because we don’t have an enclosed space like a chicken farm. Maybe we slit their throats, but they run at 65 kilometres an hour,” Pasitney told the Sun in a prior interview.
“These are just farmers trying to make the world a better place,” she said. “We need to stand together as farmers, as mothers, [and] fathers … and we need to protect what we have left for our children.”
