A federal appeals court in Canada has upheld an order to cull about 400 ostriches at a British Columbia farm where dozens of birds died amid an avian flu outbreak last year — ostriches that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz have asked Canadian authorities to spare.
The three-judge panel ruled on Thursday to dismiss the appeal of Universal Ostrich Farms, a 65-acre, family-owned operation located about 55 miles north of the US border. The farm’s owners, Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski, have been fighting to keep their ostriches alive since December, when several ostriches started falling ill and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a cull order for the remaining flock.
A total of 69 ostriches died over the course of 36 days, according to the owners, about 15 percent of the original flock. Tests were conducted on two of the dead ostriches, with positive results for avian influenza.
Mass slaughter has long been the chief strategy for containing bird flu, a highly contagious disease caused by influenza A viruses spread among wild birds, aquatic birds, birds of prey, and waterfowl, as well as domestic birds such as poultry. An outbreak this year resulted in more than 120 million hens being slaughtered and egg prices rising to record levels. Humans can also become infected with bird flu, although this is rare, with cases typically involving people who come into close contact with infected birds.
Espersen and Bilinski have argued that their ostriches are special, with the couple halting their production of ostrich meat in 2020 to shift their focus to studying the antibodies found in the ostriches’ eggs. According to court documents, the owners said their flock suffered from a significant illness in February 2020 that led to the deaths of 10 birds. While laboratory tests determined the cause as bacterial infections, the owners speculated that avian flu may have contributed to the illness and that the surviving birds may have developed a natural immunity from future outbreaks, the court documents state.
In May, as the case worked its way through the courts and the family rallied support for their birds through a “Save Our Ostriches” campaign, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s president, and had his team meet with agency officials. He asked that the agency reconsider the cull order, noting that “we believe there is significant value in studying this population.”
“Culling infected flocks should be a judicious decision, one that considers both scientific evidence and the long-term impact on both animal welfare and agricultural sustainability,” Kennedy wrote. “The indiscriminate destruction of entire flocks without up-to-date testing and evaluation can have significant consequences, including the loss of valuable genetic stock that may help explain risk factors for H5N1 mortality.”
Mehmet Oz, who oversees the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, backed Kennedy’s support of the birds, offering his 900-acre Florida ranch as a place to relocate the ostriches.
“We’re sticking our necks out for the birds,” Oz, a former daytime TV star known as Dr. Oz, told the New York Post.
In a statement about the court’s decision on Thursday, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would not share any specific operational plans or dates regarding the ostriches, as the agency does “not generally release details about the operations of individual farms to help protect the privacy of producers.”
“Our disease response aims to protect both public and animal health, as well as minimize impacts on the $6.8 billion domestic poultry industry, and the Canadian economy,” the statement reads. “This supports Canadian families and poultry farmers whose livelihoods depend on maintaining international market access for $1.75 billion in exports.”
In a post on Facebook, Universal Ostrich Farms co-owner Espersen and Katie Pasitney, her daughter and spokesperson for the farm, said they were “not going to give up.” On their “Save the Ostriches” website, they said some of the ostriches have been with the family for more than 34 years and each bird has “its own name and personality, like Frank, Lulu, and Q-Tip.”
“These birds deserve decades more to dance in the sun,” Pasitney said in a separate post.