The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Friday that it used “professional marksmen” to kill a flu-exposed ostrich herd in British Columbia, bringing to an end a nearly year-long legal saga that had attracted attention from conservatives in the United States, including US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“As part of its disease response policy, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has culled the ostrich population on a farm in Edgewood, British Columbia,” the CFIA said in a statement Friday.
The farm in question, Universal Ostrich Farms, will remain under quarantine.
“After consulting with experts experienced in managing ostrich disease outbreaks,” the statement added, “the CFIA concluded that the most appropriate and humane option was to use professional marksmen in a controlled on-farm setting.”
Universal Ostrich Farms had launched a legal battle against the CFIA’s decision to cull the herd, attracting the attention of Kennedy, who urged the Canadian government in May to reconsider.
Kennedy had argued the animals exposed to flu may hold potential for disease research, but the agency said there was no evidence for this and yesterday the Canadian Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the case, removing the last legal roadblock to prevent their culling.
Katie Pasitney, the spokesperson for Universal Ostrich Farms, told CNN that the culling was “traumatizing.”
“There’s nothing professional or humane about putting almost 330 birds in a square pen in the dark of night and shooting at them,” Pasitney said on Friday.
‘Stamping out’ bird flu
The CFIA had ordered the culling after detecting highly pathogenic avian influenza on the farm in December 2024.
In a statement published Thursday, shortly after the Canadian Supreme Court dismissed the case, the CFIA cited its “stamping out” policy, in which exposed or infected animals are killed en masse to prevent further outbreaks.
The farm’s owners disputed the CFIA’s conclusions, arguing that the ostriches that survived the flu might offer disease-fighting antibodies for research – an idea that Kennedy endorsed in his letter to the CFIA in May after meeting with Canadian officials.
The ostriches, Kennedy wrote, offered the “potential to study both antibody levels and cellular immunity to help further our scientific understanding of the virus and the immune physiologic response.”
The agency, however, called the farm’s research claims “unsubstantiated,” saying that the CFIA had “not received any evidence of research activities” on the ostrich farm, nor “any research to show the flock of ostriches currently under quarantine has a unique capacity to produce eggs with antibodies.”
The CFIA eventually took full control of the farm and its animals in September. Supporters have frequently gathered near the farm to protest. In its statement Friday, the CFIA warned demonstrators not to interfere with its operations and reiterated that drone flights over the property are illegal.
Throughout the controversy, Canadian officials have cited the need to prevent an outbreak that might damage the country’s nearly $7 billion poultry industry.
There are more cases of avian flu in British Columbia than any other Canadian province, according to CFIA’s statistics, with an estimated 11,439,000 birds affected as of October 28.
Neighboring Alberta, the next most-affected province, has an estimated 2 million birds impacted.
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