Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — Ontario virologist and researcher David Speicher says that those headline-making British Columbia ostriches “definitely” have herd immunity against the avian flu virus and pose no threat to Canada’s broader poultry industry, despite the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) insistence that the big birds be destroyed.
Sixty-nine ostriches at the Edgewood, B.C., operation died during an outbreak last December and January. Only two carcasses were tested and avian flu, H5N1, was detected. A remaining 400 ostriches survived. Six months later, after prevailing in court, the CFIA still wants those healthy birds dead under a policy of “stamping out” flocks where an infection occurs.
“Avian flu is endemic in (wild) ducks and geese,” Speicher told Farmers Forum. “It’s like a member of the Liberal party getting the flu and wanting to cull the whole caucus.”
David Speicher. (Nelson Zandbergen photo)
Speicher, member of an independent “scientific team” advising the Universal ostrich farm since February, decried the CFIA for not allowing the owners to test the survivors for the virus and even threatened the farmers with a $250,000 fine and six months in jail if they do test the birds. “It’s a case of CFIA ‘following the policy’ and are unwavering,” he said.
Such tests “would probably not detect anything,” thus proving the ostriches are healthy and exposing the CFIA policy as “faulty,” he said.
“These birds need to be at least tested to prove they are healthy or not before a blanket policy can be used,” he said, adding, “There is also no evidence that the samples tested by the CFIA (six months ago) actually came from the two dead birds on the farm. There was no recorded chain of custody of samples.”
The CFIA is “trying to cull these ostriches at all cost and don’t care about the image of the agency,” he said. “They are promoting the (World Health Organization) OneHealth agenda instead of using common sense and following the science.
“These are not birds used for food, and by culling these birds there’s nothing stopping CFIA from doing the same to any farm (industrial or backyard) anywhere in Canada.”
Speicher said the ostriches pose no threat to the conventional poultry industry, and he warned about the implications of allowing the CFIA to carry out a cull on the “suspicion” of avian flu without fresh testing to prove the virus is still present “If the CFIA can cull 400 healthy ostriches based off a PCR test from the farm six months ago, what’s stopping them from killing poultry flocks based off a test result from those farms six months ago?”
International figures, including U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have criticized the cull, calling it “a huge mistake.”
Kennedy’s Trump administration colleague, TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, even offered his Florida ranch as a new home for the ostriches, according to the New York Post. However, the flock owners have decided not to pursue that idea, according to the CBC.
Kennedy intervened further with a May 23 letter to the CFIA proposing that the ostriches be spared to allow the U.S. National Institutes of Health to assist with a long-term study. “We believe significant scientific knowledge may be garnered from following the ostriches in a controlled environment at the Universal Ostrich Farm,” Kennedy wrote. He also asserted that efforts to extirpate — stamp out — bird flu “will be fruitless” because the bug has been around for thousands of years and is “endemic in the wild bird populations of the U.S. and Canada.”
Unmoved by Kennedy’s overture, the CFIA insists the cull will proceed. But when that happens remains unclear.
Even British Columbians are not impressed. Dozens show up almost every day to protest the cull.
Simon Fraser University professor of biochemistry Fiona Brinkman questions why the agency refuses to reassess the flock’s health status. She argues the CFIA should retest the ostriches, given that the birds were tested back in December and not one bird had died since January.
B.C. Premier David Eby is also frustrated by CFIA’s lack of flexibility. “We understand the importance of containing the bird flu and the important role that agency plays,” he told reporters. “What’s hard to watch is a lack of discretion and ability to evaluate case-by-case scenarios.”
