27-05-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
Protesters are flocking to a BC ostrich farm. Is the government's bird flu response to blame?
Dozens of protesters are flocking to a BC ostrich farm that is the fresh darling of Canada's far-right media for its months-long fight against a Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)-ordered cull.
As the protests spread and become more extreme, some experts are questioning whether CFIA's overall response to the avian flu is as effective as it could be. Some researchers say the protesters might actually have a point — in part.
In late December, the agency ordered the entire herd to be culled after some birds were infected with a highly infectious strain of avian flu. The farm fought back in court, online and in the media, arguing their birds should be saved — because they allegedly have herd immunity and are being used for antibody research. But their protest was unsuccessful. Earlier this month a federal judge ruled the CFIA's order was justified and the cull should proceed.
The gathering has strong echoes of the Freedom Convoy, with key characters in that movement popping up on the farm. Take the far-right influencers Jim Kerr, Ron Clark and Colin "Big Bear" Ross, who have all boosted the farm's message to their sizable social media followings.
Kerr was so deeply involved in the 2022 protests he was interviewed by Russia Today (RT) in 2022 when police cleared Freedom Convoy protesters from Ottawa. Clark — who bills himself a "Freedom Advocate" on his Facebook page — was part of a group who travelled to Ottawa in 2023 in an effort to replicate the convoy.
Ross was one of the organizers of a planned "Freedom Convoy 2.0" in Winnipeg in 2023, but on Tuesday asked his social media followers to contribute thousands of dollars' worth of equipment and time.
"We need your support — this is growing fast," Ross wrote last week, asking for food, fuel, firewood, first aid equipment, "oil-field grade" generators and light towers, porta-potties, caterers and cash donations. Even sound engineers were on the list because the group "needs your magic."
As far-right protests spread and become more extreme in their support of a BC ostrich farm facing a CFIA-ordered cull., some experts are questioning whether CFIA's overall response to the avian flu is as effective as it could be.
Two days later, he lashed out in a Facebook post at CBC reporter Andrew Kurjata for covering the protest, calling him "corrupt" and accusing him without evidence of lying and bending the truth, recalling the attacks levied on journalists during the 2022 occupation in Ottawa.
As the freedom convoy tie-ins mount, the ostrich story continues to soar: On Thursday, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to the head of the CFIA asking the agency to "consider not culling the entire flock."
Videos posted to social media by Katie Pasitney, one of the farmers, Ross and other protesters showed a festival-like atmosphere at the farm over the weekend, with river dips and daytrippers.
And overnight between Thursday and Friday, a second ostrich was mysteriously shot dead. In a Facebook live post, Pasitney said the farm had issues with drones but asked supporters not to speculate about any links between the drones and the shooting.
In her Facebook live updates after the shooting, she insisted that only her statements and official statements from the farm should be considered accurate.
The farm has welcomed the support, even as it has tried to distance itself from the maelstrom of misinformation and aggressive sentiments, like those shared by Ross and in social media posts about the situation.
"Asking questions is much more productive than sharing unverified and misunderstood portions of information. Please consider that sharing false information and statements can be considered defamation, will damage the farm's reputation and increase our farm's exposure to harm," co-owners Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski wrote in a statement posted to the farm's Save our Ostriches website.
Swirling throughout the social media posts, interviews and livestreams by the farm's owners and their supporters is the idea that the cull is a "sinister" example of government overreach. In an interview with Canada's National Observer, Pasitney, one of the farmers suggested the CFIA's order is part of an effort by "Big Pharma" to quash the farm's research into ostrich antibodies.
The CFIA flatly rejects that assertion. In a statement, the agency said a single laboratory confirmed case of H5 avian influenza is sufficient to declare a poultry farm infected with the highly transmissible avian flu. Canada adheres to a so-called "stamping out" policy to cull all the birds on a farm, in line with international guidelines. Bird flu, the agency said, has to be controlled to prevent its spread to other birds, as well as humans.
"All highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses … have the potential to infect mammals, including humans,' the CFIA said in a statement. 'Allowing a domestic poultry flock known to be exposed to HPAI to remain alive allows a potential source of the virus to persist.'
But some experts say the protesters might have a point — sort of.
"There's a right way to manage an outbreak, and there are probably 1,000 wrong ways," said Jeff Wilson, an epidemiologist and veterinarian. He taught at the University of Guelph and worked for the Public Health Agency of Canada for over 15 years before starting his own epidemiological consulting and outbreak response consultancy.
"To be frank, what's happening now for avian influenza nationally, and on this ostrich farm, is not being done by best practices by a long shot."
The problem is that the CFIA is applying a prescriptive, predetermined approach to the crisis by applying the same "stamping out" policy nation-wide, regardless of the size or type of poultry farm.
He would prefer to see the agency pull together a group of external experts specialized in everything from the science and data of the virus and its spread, like immunologists and epidemiologists, to political and communications experts. The goal would be to ensure the agency is gathering a wide range of expertise on the problem, and is leaving few opportunities to breach public trust, he explained.
Gathering data about the problem, using it to evaluate whether response measures are actually working — and changing them if they aren't — is also key, he said.
"To do it properly is as hard as brain surgery," he said.
In a statement, the CFIA denied that its approach is ineffective and pointed to the federal court ruling that allowed it to proceed with the cull, which outlines the agency's rationale. Adopted by Canada's largest trading partners and enshrined into trade negotiations, the stamping-out policy provides broad guidelines for how the agency should approach the crisis, but leaves specific practices up to individual countries to determine.
The approach, which requires countries to rapidly cull entire flocks on infected farms soon after discovering an infected bird, is meant to counteract the virus's ability to spread easily and rapidly before symptoms emerge, limiting the risks it poses to public and animal health, and Canadian farmers' ability to trade internationally.
Anything short of a cull, the CFIA said, 'would increase the possibility of reassortment or mutation, particularly with birds raised in open pasture where there is ongoing exposure to wildlife. A human case of H5N1 in BC earlier this year required critical care, and an extended hospital stay for the patient, and there have been a number of human cases in the United States, including a fatality.'
Science aside, Wilson said part of the problem is how the CFIA communicated its decision-making process about the ostrich cull, and the avian flu more broadly. The bodies responsible for managing an outbreak need to be communicating "truthfully and completely … in a language that everyone can understand, and it has to be two ways, not just a push of information," he said.
Refusing to do so "utterly destroys" the CFIA's credibility, making it harder to gain public trust and support, he said.
The problem is accentuated by the rise of the far-right and social media in recent years, added Shane Gunster, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University. The ostrich farm's basic storyline is relatable and social media-friendly, making it easy for the anti-vax, right-wing conspiracy world to graft that sympathy to their worldview, burnishing their credibility and providing a "'common sense' veneer to their more extremist views," he wrote in an email.
And that has been exactly what has happened: far-right media, including The Rebel, have raised the farm's story to international prominence — and the story being amplified by the likes of US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr spreads the message even deeper among the far-right.
Meanwhile, the government's side of the story has been lacking. While Gunster hasn't analyzed in detail the CFIA's communications surrounding the ostrich farm outbreak, his perception of media reports show that the agency's storyline is more complex, and it hasn't provided a "strong, sympathetic spokesperson" to make the agency's case, effectively yielding ground in the fight for public opinion to the far-right's conspiratorial appeals.
"If we have to start a revolution from the giant chickens, so be it. It's gotta start somewhere," said Clark, the self-styled "Freedom Advocate," in a May 2, 2025 Facebook livestream that received about 1,000 comments and over 350 shares as of May 23.
