{"id":168046,"date":"2025-09-25T11:58:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/168046\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T11:58:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:58:06","slug":"canada-order-to-cull-more-than-400-ostriches-over-bird-flu-fears-ruffles-feathers-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/168046\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada: order to cull more than 400 ostriches over bird flu fears ruffles feathers | Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police have warned that the growing furore around a Canadian<\/a> ostrich farm \u2013 fanned by animal rights activists and prominent allies of Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 has led to intimidation, harassment and death threats against businesses in a small British Columbia town.<\/p>\n

Universal Ostrich Farms, near the town of Edgewood, was ordered in May to cull more than 400 birds, amid fears of an outbreak of H5N1 avian flu, and earlier this week officials seized control of the business. Sixty-nine birds have already died after the outbreak of a flu-like illness, but on Wednesday Canada\u2019s supreme court issued an interim stay on the cull order as it weighed whether to hear the case.<\/p>\n

The cull order has catalyzed a fierce protest by the farm owners and protesters \u2013 as well as senior figures in the Trump administration, who have decried the public health effort as government overreach.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Chris Sanders, a conservative commentator, said in a Facebook video that he was offering his ranches in Oklahoma, Texas and South Dakota as a new home for the imperilled ostriches. Sanders\u2019 offer follows lobbying by Robert F Kennedy Jr<\/a>, the US health secretary, and Mehmet Oz<\/a>, a physician and former TV host appointed by Trump as the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, to move the birds to Oz\u2019s ranch in Florida.<\/p>\n

Protest signs in support of Universal Ostrich Farms on 22 September 2025. Photograph: Canadian Press\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Kennedy previously wrote a letter to the president of Canada\u2019s food inspection agency in May, asking the farm to be spared from a planned cull. US billionaire John Catsimatidis has also lobbied the Canadian government to reverse its cull order.<\/p>\n

The growing row over the ostriches \u2013 and a simmering post-pandemic skepticism of government \u2013 have inspired protesters to descend on the farm, with many broadcasting their frustration on social media. Under a live stream of the bird enclosure posted online by the farm, commenters frequently express skepticism towards vaccines and call for more proof that the birds are ill.<\/p>\n

The situation at Universal Ostrich Farms escalated on Tuesday when co-owner Karen Espersen and her daughter Katie Pasitney were arrested by RCMP officers for obstructing food inspectors. Police have since erected a three-meter barrier of hay bales and barred anyone from entering the ostrich pen, which is now under the control of Canada\u2019s food inspection agency. Later that evening, some of the bales were set on fire, but were soon extinguished.<\/p>\n

The farm\u2019s supporters have heckled police at the scene, while Pasitney appealed in a Facebook video to officers to \u201cstop the massacre\u201d. She has also used the farm\u2019s Facebook page to criticize local businesses providing services to the Canadian food inspection agency.<\/p>\n

The RCMP said it had received complains of \u201cthreats, intimidation and harassment due to the dispute\u2019\u201d. One company, Nucor Environmental Solutions, posted on its website that \u201cfalse allegations of involvement have resulted in \u2026 team members, including their family members, being inundated with false accusations and threatened \u2013 including death threats\u201d.<\/p>\n

Canadian federal government says the food inspection agency is following a \u201cstamping out\u201d policy in order to limit the spread of avian flu, a move in line with broader advice from the World Health Organization.<\/a><\/p>\n

A Universal Ostrich Farms supporter celebrates after learning an interim stay order was granted delaying the culling. Photograph: Canadian Press\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The farm owners and their supporters argue that because the last bird flu death occurred on 15 January 2025, with the surviving majority appearing healthy or recovered, the flock has developed at least partial herd immunity against H5N1. They have also cast doubt on the scope and effectiveness of testing on the birds.<\/p>\n

But in a federal court ruling<\/a> from May, the judge hearing the case found food inspectors operated within their mandate when they ordered the cull as a way of preventing the spread of disease. The judge also found that allowing the birds to remain alive could lead to the spread of avian influenza to other animals, the poultry industry \u2013 or humans.<\/p>\n

Andrew Fenton, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University says the murkiness over how the birds are being used – or will be used in the future – has implications for what sort of health risk the flock poses to food systems.<\/p>\n

But a more divisive rhetoric that has emerged, one akin to the anti-vaccine movement during the coronavirus pandemic, threatens to undermine public confidence in public health agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a sense in some of the rhetoric that \u2018government is the bad guy\u2019 and that it\u2019s an individual fighting against a corrupt system. These are not helpful polarizations and leads to quite toxic opposition to good faith efforts of that are trying to protect the public,\u201d said Fenton. \u201cThere\u2019s an anti-science sentiment in the air at the moment that\u2019s becoming quite dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said the farmers\u2019 request that the birds be retested was \u201creasonable\u201d given reports the flock seems to be relatively healthy and there have been no deaths since January.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo retest would be a good move for the food inspection agency because we can\u2019t afford to let trust in public health agencies erode,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to respect what they\u2019re trying to do because the public health concerns they\u2019re addressing are serious and real.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have warned that the growing furore around a Canadian ostrich farm \u2013 fanned by animal rights activists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-168046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}